I had an interesting experience today.
I went to feed my green male eastern, out of brumation for a week or two, one of my panfish worms. He REALLY loved the flicking movement it made and he had it in his mouth in no time. However, after a moment of swallowing, he stopped, paused, then regurged. On the outside of the worm I saw lumps of yellow fluid mixed with worm mucus. So I got an idea...

For worms, including red wigglers, and pan fish worms, like Wayne and I have been using, we can easily bypass the toxicity by tricking the worm to release its toxin before being swallowed. Of course some of my snakes have no problem downing the worm with the poison, like one of my baby easterns, however it would be great if we could convert the most readily available worm, red wigglers, into usable garter food.

The method I just tested involved irritating the front of the worm until the yellow liquid appears, then simply rinsing it off. They don't have an infinite supply of the stuff on hand, and the garter will have the body digested by the time it would be able to make more.

I'll be running some personal tests on this, especially with red wigglers proposing so much potential.