What do you think!!!!!

[GARTERKID]

After last years breeding season i have decided to take awhile off.I sold all of my reptiles except for the nicest looking 2010 garter babies and alot of others.Im lookinh to set up a display setup for all my.My question is if i house the following together whats gonna happen i woulkd like to see them breed as a colony.
oregon redspots
melanistics
albino checkerds
redsideds
anery redsideds
fl blues
fl blue stripes
santa cruz
nebraska albinos
iowa snows
plains
easterns
Total with all these kinds their are 41 im thinking a very large setup.\So what do you think in next few years should i be expecting some strange hybrid garters.
Let me know what you think.
thanks
jp

[guidofatherof5]

No offense but I think it's a terrible idea for all garter snakes.
Hybrids occur in overlapping ranges but to purposely breed them for that is wrong.
The individual species offer so much variety that this should never be done.
The group you have assembled is a genetic bomb.
I'm a purest and don't want to see garter snakes go down the road that other snakes have taken.
Please reconsider this idea. There is no market for the hybrids. They cannot be released and you will be forced to either keep them for the rest of their lives or euthanize them.
This is not a good idea and I'm sure I speak for most forum members when I say this thread will not be met with support.
I, by no means am trying to offend you or attack you personally only this idea.:)

[GARTERKID]

Thankyou for the response you have a rite to your own beliefs.

[ssssnakeluvr]

you will find that a large number of people are goikng to agree with Steve.... it's a bad idea. only way it would be ok is if you keep every last baby produced and do not allow any outside your home or euthanize the babies. gene pools will get all messed up out here if they are allowed to be passed on. sure, it may produce some cool looking snakes, but not worth anything.

[Stefan-A]

I for one agree with Steve. In fact, the whole idea makes me want to pull my hair out.

Prepare to be underwhelmed by the result and overwhelmed by the sheer number of offspring.

[mb90078]

Even if you wanted to produce a hybrid (which I am only SLIGHTLY more open to than the general consensus on this board), you will never know which pairing led to which offspring! That is the main reason that I think this is not a good idea above and beyond any other hybridization.

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

Sorry but there is NO setup large enough to house 41 garter snakes together. Unless you are using a room. The problem is that so many snakes in a display cage is goig to be extremely unsanitary. Even if you did a basic cage, with paper towel substrate and cardboard hides, you are looking at 41 poops every 2 or 3 days. Thats not realistically manageable. Your snakes are going to become ill. Also, it's entirely irresponsible to put all of those snakes together... You will be making all sorts of hybrids and you wont even know what the hell crosses the resulting babies are. If you qre going to make hybrids you need to at the very least know exactly what crosses they are. Not that i would ever condone hybridizing garter snakes.... Look at them... Why on earth would you? You have the potential to poison the entire garter hobby with bad genetics. All those albinos and stuff... You wont get anything but a bunch of normal brown babies that are carrying a bunch of miscellaneous genes that you wont even know about. Thats a disaster waiting to happen. Or maybe i read something wrong and you dont actually intend to house 41 garters together... I am on my phone so i cant go back and re read.... So if i have mistaken what you said... I am sorry. I mean... I juat hope nobody would ever actually do that. Keep them separate by species, or mix species of the same sex. Not both at the same time... Ever! And even if they were all the same species... There is no way you can house that many together under healthy, sanitary conditions. In the wild, things break down their poop. In a cage, it festers.

[ConcinusMan]

I for one agree with Steve. In fact, the whole idea makes me want to pull my hair out

Same here. Bad idea and Shannon is right, there's no way I can properly house just my 15 garters in one enclosure, let alone 40.

The few times that garter hybrids have surfaced, nothing new or spectacular resulted. Just unidentifiable "mutt" garter snakes. There are so many beautiful color morphs and species, that I don't see any reason to create hybrids. I only see many reasons not to.

To do this intentionally is irresponsible. This is not just a matter of opinion. If you love garter snakes I ask you to please not do this. It's not good for garters at all and can be harmful to wild populations if any hybrids escape and pass on their genes.

It's a little different than what's going on with other hybrids (corns, milks, kings, etc) because there is a market for those and they are usually kept in locations where they can do no harm to wild gene pools if they escape.

Nobody wants to buy hybrid garter snakes and the potential for them to pollute wild gene pools is very high since garter snakes are practically everywhere. The only responsible thing to do with garter hybrids is to use them as food for other animals or to euthanize them.

[GARTERKID]

thyankyou to all that responded and you are all welcome to your own beliefs and you made some good points so i rethought this idea and im going to just sell most of them and keep the ones with good genes the only thing is i could use some help to understand what kind of garter to breed to what other kind to get what i dont understand any of that.I would appreciate if any of you could help me out and point out some of the non hybrid babies i could produce with the kinds i have listed.Maybe if i know who to pair who with i will know what i9 will get in the end and then i can decide on which garters i will keep.
thanks to all who responded
garterkid2011

[ConcinusMan]

Well, you breed oregon red spots to oregon red spots. Albino checkereds to albino or het albino checkereds, etc.

BTW, you list "melanistic" but don't say what species. melanistic is just a morph. Nebraska and iowa albinos are also morphs. They are plains garters. You can breed nebraska to iowa albinos to produce double hets. The double hets can then be bred to each other to produce litters containing both kinds of albino.

I'm not sure what other information you are fishing for but I can tell you that if you produce litters of anery red sideds,(or even just het anery. anery's are key to producing snows when bred to albinos) florida blue eastern garters, florida blue stripe garters, or santa cruz garters, they will sell like hot cakes and you'll get excellent prices for them. If you decide to produce unidentifiable hybrids, nobody who is into garters will want them in the least bit and they will essentially be worthless.

I'm sure you know that certain purebred snakes sell well at good prices since you sold a lot of very desireable snakes already. If you wanted to get into breeding, you could have made a lot of money every year by keeping and breeding the adults you sold. The buyers know this and that's why you had no problem selling them. You have, and had so many awesome purebred morphs and they sold very well and so I'm really surprised you are considering producing hybrids when nobody wants them.

[gregmonsta]

Sorry, but deliberately going for hybrids is a waste of good bloodlines and a potential minefield for your area once you pass them on (regardless of if you label them as crosses or not).
Choose your one favourite species (or one with a wide variety of morph potential) and keep a colony of that.

[kibakiba]

I'm restraining myself from saying some rude things here, and it's very hard not to. Garter snakes aren't breeding machines for you to just make quick money off of. They need proper care and I doubt you'd give that with 40 or more snakes to take care of. There's also no way to put 40 snakes in one enclosure, that's abusive in my opinion. Don't turn garter snakes into what stupid corns and pythons are. No one wants hybrids here, if you do sell them make sure people KNOW what they are getting. Don't be stupid and lie, you'll ruin someones whole effort in keeping the genes clean. A lot of the snakes and morphs you put up sell for a great price at purebred, so what's the point of making a hybrid? I'm 99.999% sure they'll fetch a LOWER price than the purebred ones. Don't be stupid.

[ConcinusMan]

Whoa, take it easy Chantel. I think he got the point. He asked what we think and we did tell him. No need to call him stupid or a liar. Ultimately, it's his choice what he wants to do.

[kibakiba]

Yeah, I know. I was woken up by my macaw having a fit so I was a bit grumpy. I'm sorry for how rude I was and I didn't mean to be so mean about it. I take back what I said and I hope you'll accept my apology, Garterkid.

[GARTERKID]

Im realizing that i definetly worded this thread wrong and my intentions wearnt clear.What im trtying to say by m,e saying hybrids i meant like all these new garters being born.You have to cross breed to get them.I was confused im looking to make new morphs and i thought bfrom all the garters species i have i would have a good chance.Im not looking to sell the babies im not looking to make money i just enjoy breeding snakes.
Im just not to sure what you breed to what to get what im going to make a new thread on what i mean with all my questions.
thanks to all who responded even to the people whon were negative thankyou
GARTERKID

[guidofatherof5]

I'm sure you will get plenty of help with your question if you are going to be breeding within a species.
Meant with no offense but if it has anything to do with cross breeding between species you will probably hit a brick wall.;)

[ConcinusMan]

Wait a second, I think he's referring to combo morphs. Not sure what you mean when you say "all these new garters being born" but people are definitely not cross breeding species to get the morphs and you don't just "make" new morphs. All the morphs you see come from naturally occurring genetic mutations from the wild, or from mutations that spring up in captivity from time to time. Now, in captivity people combine certain mutations to create morphs that would have probably never existed in the wild.

Snows are a good example.

If you get yourself an albino red sided garter, you can breed it to your anerythristic red sided.(that is still not cross breeding since they are the same species) The babies will come out normal looking but carry the genes for both anery and albino. (called double hets) The double hets are then bred to each other (called inbreeding, not crossbreeding) and the chance is slim, but if any of their babies come out homozygous for albino AND anerythristic, then they are snows, a pure white snake with pink eyes. This has already been done, so they wouldn't be a new morph, but still a valuable one at around $200 a snake and of course, they were a new morph for that species, the first time they were created. Again, I want to make it clear that you don't just "make" new morphs. Snows were created by combining two naturally occurring mutations. You can only work with existing genes and try different combinations of those genes to come up with something different.

This year, probably for the first time, captive bred babies of a "new" blue morph of anerythristic Oregon Red Spotted garters will probably be available. But this morph really isn't new, it's only new to the captive trade and I didn't just create it out of thin air. I found this morph in the wild and now myself and two other breeders have pairs of them to breed. Since the intensity and shade of their blue color varies, we can keep the bluest babies and selectively breed them over generations and perhaps come up with snakes that are bluer than any I find in the wild.

We are already seeing red sided garters in captivity that have much more red on them than you would normally find in the wild. They were created through many generations of selective breeding but the gene for red always existed just like the genes for piebald rats (domestic coloration) always existed in wild rats. We just had to selectively breed them in captivity over generations to bring out the colors you see in domestic rats.

I hope this answers at least some of your questions.