Hi
My name is Kate Breimayer, I am currently living in Olympia WA USA and have 3 red sided garters of Scott Felzer stock and 2 male (grr were supposed to be a pair of long term captive) wild (cat) caught male Oregon Red Spotteds from a guy in Springfield OR. I was intending to breed the Oregon Red Spotteds... I'd highly recommend not buying the wild snakes! Luckily these are quite healthy since the cat injuries healed.

Went down to Oregon last weekend and only found a single fat female ordinoides which I didn't take since the lady who owns the land fell in love with it. Her husband is from Australia and is not a snake lover-he's used to venomous individuals-I think he really wanted me to take it (: . I had talked to Oregon Fish and Wildlife and they stated emphatically that it is fine for me to have pet native garters, they don't know where the idea that it is illegal came from and that the only protected species is a location of kingsnake and those found on certain sites such as preserves or parks. The couple who own the land where I found the ordinoides are both professors of veterinary science and they think it's not that big of a deal to clear a snake of wild pathogens and parasites, and can provide the meds, so I might go back there in the spring when there are more of them around. They and I are assuming I would take only one pregnant female, quarantine and treat her and then keep her babies and release her. Much easier than treating a whole group. They don't take treating sick snakes quite as seriously as we do, since it's an everyday thing to them and in fact always inspires curiosity rather than dread.

The 3 red sideds are a year old and growing nicely, 2 are from the anery line and possible hets. Scott's anery line has great intense red color, maybe because it's been selectively bred longer? The other is possible het to albino and still a nice color, I will seek an albino mate for it to see what I get as have had good luck with possible hets in birds. I don't know their genders yet, am not good at that. I think it's one male and 2 females. If you are shopping for red sideds I recommend Scott's snakes and for color those from the anery line are awesome. I don't even care about the anery part, am a fan of red and black (:

We may move to Hawaii soon. They don't allow snakes, so I will have to sell the lot, hopefully to someone who can provide me babies later when I return. If that doesn't happen I will move to Portland Oregon and get a female for these 2 males, and a pair of ordinoides since the blue and green stripe morphs are quite lovely.

Thanks for setting up this forum, good to see a PHP board on garters. These are so much easier to navigate than the Kingsnake board IMO and I love the yahoo group but suspect yahoo sold me out to spammers. Looking forward to meeting lots of good people here as the forum grows, and if I do end up in Hawaii I assume that won't be permanent so I'll be back into garters.
Kate