Quote Originally Posted by vwsrcool View Post
if mice are considered a complete diet for garters, as long as they are getting mice why not give them a variety as extra stimulation? i know if i lived in a glass cage my entire life i wouldnt want to eat the same thing every day.

when i had a black rat snake years ago mice was his main diet, it also go baby chickens, baby quail and toads.

my point is i have always tried to make my pets lives better ( or at least i think so ) by feeding them variety, and changing the items in there cages every few weeks.

am i wrong for thinking that way?
To me, its not really a black and white issue of right and wrong. Look at it from the snakes actual prospective, (not a human thinking like a snake). If your snake is CB which its really a shame that so many people seem to have acquired their garters in less than ideal ways, it knows no life in the wild. A snake isnt like a mammal, so scratch the mammalian thought process. It doesnt care that it lives in a box, it doesnt care that its fed one type of food, it just doesnt care at all....its a snake. they operate only on instinct with very little altered behavior. In nature, animals specialize on one food item all the time... a balanced meal is a balanced meal...toads, frogs and other captured prey only increase introduction to parasites and other dangers that, while encountered in the woods, are much different inside a glass box.
Garters and other active colubrids are unique in the fact that they dont spend all their active hours in a hole, like pythons for instance. Room to roam and stuff to explore is what provides stimulation, not their lunch.