Feeding garter snake live mice

[Cain149]

Hey guys, new to the forum here and wanted to get some opinions on feeding live mice. About a week an a half and a half ago we had some unseasonably warm weather for Colorado(mid 60's) and my kids an I caught a garter snake in our yard. My wife wants to get rid of it but it has since snowed and we still might have more coming so I was going to keep it until spring. I have been trying for a week to feed it live fish and nightcrawlers with no luck. Today I went down the local reptile store and got a live small hopper mouse and threw it in. After I left the room for 10 minutes and came back it was eating it. I know that dead mice are recommended, but I don't want it to get used to that if we are going to release it. Does anyone else feed live mice and have you had any problems with them?

The snake is about 2 or 2 and a half feet long, and roughly the diameter of a nickel. I have it in a 10 gallon terrarium with a 100 watt heating light running about 12 hours a day. Its about 80 degrees in the day and about 68-70 at night in the tank.

[d_virginiana]

First of all, they shouldn't eat anything with fur on it. Their systems just aren't built to digest it and it can cause intestinal blockages. If you're feeding an animal anything live that has teeth (this applies to any reptile) you should supervise until the animal is dead. A bite can do serious damage to the snake. Finally, wild garters rarely eat mice. They're primarily fish/worm/amphibian eaters. Plus, they run pretty heavily on instinct. If you're going to be releasing it in a couple months anyway, feeding mice probably won't affect his wild eating habits at all.

[guidofatherof5]

First of all, they shouldn't eat anything with fur on it. Their systems just aren't built to digest it and it can cause intestinal blockages. If you're feeding an animal anything live that has teeth (this applies to any reptile) you should supervise until the animal is dead. A bite can do serious damage to the snake. Finally, wild garters rarely eat mice. They're primarily fish/worm/amphibian eaters. Plus, they run pretty heavily on instinct. If you're going to be releasing it in a couple months anyway, feeding mice probably won't affect his wild eating habits at all.

I think the amount of wild pinkies eaten by garter is probably higher then we all realize. Especially in urban areas where mice nest(garages, sheds, siding) I imagine garters keep a good number of pinkies from becoming adults. I don't think many garters would take on a full grown mouse but a nest full of pinkies is a great meal. Just my thoughts.

[d_virginiana]

I think the amount of wild pinkies eaten by garter is probably higher then we all realize. Especially in urban areas where mice nest(garages, sheds, siding) I imagine garters keep a good number of pinkies from becoming adults. I don't think many garters would take on a full grown mouse but a nest full of pinkies is a great meal. Just my thoughts.

Makes sense. I wonder what percentage mice would make up in a more rural setting where I imagine the nests are spaced out more and they don't have the same sort of year-round access to food and heat that they do when they live in close contact with humans? I kind of instinctively want to say that it'd be less, but where I live the rodent 'hot spots' are so dominated by racers and ratsnakes that I've seen only one wild garter in about fifteen years. They might have a better chance with the rodent population a bit more spread out so that it's harder for one of the larger rodent eating colubrids to set up camp and kind of monopolize access to mouse nests...
(Nothing to do with the original question, just thinking out loud)

[Cain149]

No live and no fur in my opinion. No live is the most humane and no fur means no chance of a fur impaction. Best to be safe.

Well maybe I will try some other foods, the next day after the mouse it decided to eat the goldfish that had been sitting in its bowl for the last week. Perhaps it was just getting used to the new environment and still in winter mode. It was a lot more energetic today and would hardly let me hold it. How big of a problem is thiaminase in goldfish? I had 2 garter snakes as a kid that were fed exclusively goldfish for over a year before we released them that didn't seem to have any problems.

[guidofatherof5]

No live and no fur in my opinion. No live is the most humane and no fur means no chance of a fur impaction. Best to be safe.

[Albert Clark]

Hey guys, new to the forum here and wanted to get some opinions on feeding live mice. About a week an a half and a half ago we had some unseasonably warm weather for Colorado(mid 60's) and my kids an I caught a garter snake in our yard. My wife wants to get rid of it but it has since snowed and we still might have more coming so I was going to keep it until spring. I have been trying for a week to feed it live fish and nightcrawlers with no luck. Today I went down the local reptile store and got a live small hopper mouse and threw it in. After I left the room for 10 minutes and came back it was eating it. I know that dead mice are recommended, but I don't want it to get used to that if we are going to release it. Does anyone else feed live mice and have you had any problems with them?

The snake is about 2 or 2 and a half feet long, and roughly the diameter of a nickel. I have it in a 10 gallon terrarium with a 100 watt heating light running about 12 hours a day. Its about 80 degrees in the day and about 68-70 at night in the tank.

Hey Cain, welcome to the forum. While it's always fun and exciting to capture and house wild caught snakes of any kind they do pose a set of risks. They are usually riddled with various forms of parasites, some internal and some external. As far as feeding them live mice, it's more familiar to wild snakes to encounter live mice than the captive snakes ( garter) that we keep. So , if you are planning on releasing him it would be better to do it sooner than later. The longer a wild snake is kept captive lessens his chances to survive once he is released back into the wild. Not only that, he has the affinity to be subjected to the captive bacterias and then taking those bacteria out into the wild and infecting wild garter populations. Most people get their garters from breeders who have captive born and bred garters that are healthier and less of a risk to be harboring parasitic loads. And those captive born and bred garters are fed frozen/ thawed mostly hairless mice and rats of an appropriate size. Of which the frozen thawed process makes for a healthier choice meal. We do supplement captives with cut fresh fish, frozen thawed fish and other invertebrates. Because a varied diet is best for garters and most snakes.

[Zdravko092368]

Obviously if the snake refused worms and fish and took live mice that is something that it eats in the wild, snakes are instinctual and they eat what their brain tells them to, there's no decision making process. So clearly this is part of it's natural diet.

I think the role rodents play in a garters natural diet is highly underrepresented, every single wild garter I have ever caught has taken unscented pinkies usually on the first try. If they didn't eat them in the wild they wouldn't do that.

[d_virginiana]

Obviously if the snake refused worms and fish and took live mice that is something that it eats in the wild, snakes are instinctual and they eat what their brain tells them to, there's no decision making process. So clearly this is part of it's natural diet.

I agree that wild garters raid rodent nests from time to time and it's part of their natural diet, but just as a disclaimer (since the OP doesn't seem to have any snake experience) they will eat a great deal of non-healthy and non-food items if they are excited and hungry. If I'm in the middle of a feeding and they expect another pinkie, I could probably drop a lego block in there and they'd try to eat it lol.

[Zdravko092368]

I agree that wild garters raid rodent nests from time to time and it's part of their natural diet, but just as a disclaimer (since the OP doesn't seem to have any snake experience) they will eat a great deal of non-healthy and non-food items if they are excited and hungry. If I'm in the middle of a feeding and they expect another pinkie, I could probably drop a lego block in there and they'd try to eat it lol.

That made me laugh because I can totally relate to that, when they get in the food zone everything is potentially edible lol.