New Pet.

[Lollyruss]

This is my first Garter snake. How often should you feed it???

I only purchased him 5 hours a ago!!!!

Lolly

[Stefan-A]

Once or twice a week, more often if it's a juvenile. 20% of its bodyweight weekly, if you feed it fish and 5-10% if you feed it mice. This is just one "recipe", not The Truth™.

[Snaky]

Welcome to the forum. The quantity is always a guess, but Stefan gives a nice rate. I give my youngster's 2x week and my addults 1x every 2-3 weeks. But I give them a bit more then 20% of it's body weight.

Since you ask about the quantity, I wonder if you know what you can give it? Fish is a nice one, but if you give fish be certain that you know about the thiaminase problem. For this I would suggest to have a look at this thread (http://www.thamnophis.com/forum/husbandry/279-first-shed.html), there is a discussion about it starting rom page 4. It's quite important that you know about this, because otherwise you'll snake might get to little vitamine B1 and die from it. Other things are mice, earthworms ( not the red one's), cat food with fish taste, steak (can be a bit more of a challenge), ... It's always nice to have some variation in the diet.

Good luck with your new one! Post some picture's if you can, it's always nice to see.

[Sid]

Welcome to the forum Lolly. One thing I would like to add is the size of food items. Keep the size in diameter to no larger than the girt of the snake.

Would love to see pictures of your new pet. What species is it?

Sid

[Gijs & Sabine]

Welcome to this forum Lolly.

[suzoo]

Hi Lolly, Welcome! I also catch tiny frogs in the Spring as a treat for my Garters. Hope you enjoy your snake and this site!
Suzoo

[GarterGuy]

Howdy and welcome to the forum. Before answering your question, I've got some to ask......Do you know if the snake is captive bred or wild caught? How big is it? Do you know what species of garter it is? Most garters you'll get here in the states from petstores will usually feed on feeder fish (rosy reds or guppies...depending on the size). If it's a captive bred animal or even if not, it may go over to mice (of an appropriate size) with some work. All my garters are fed mice, which works out very well on a lot of levels. Something else to try would be earth worms (not the "redworms" that are sold for fish bait, actual earthworms or night crawlers, again depending on the size of the snake). Hope this helps.
Roy