How to know if my garter is gravid or not

[warbot]

I have 2 adult female checkered garters, and a pair of red sided garters.
I couldn't find a checkered garters male to breed with, so I wanted to see if my red sided garter would maybe do something, surprisingly he did.

So, now this was in the beginning of December (have exact dates at home)

Now how do I know if she is gravid because I have my 2 adult females in 1 one enclosure, since they were toothpicks, but naturally I would need to split them if she is gravid and add in all the necessary goodies to make her comfortable etc...

behavior changes:

1. very agitated
2. tail wagging for nothing (slowly, not a rattle)
3. she is larger than the other
4. she is still eating
5. she coughed up some... slime stuff?! last night but that was my fault I was fixing their cage, and had to move them to do so.
6. sometimes it looks like she want's to climb out the cage, up the sides all over the cage... then suddenly stop, not moving for some time.
then slowly start moving around again.
7. I can't feel anything inside of her, there is long lumps but that could be because they were fed a few days before.
8. when I pick her up, her tail curls into a complete circle, and looking very uncomfortable, this is one of the signs of carpet pythons being gravid, so I'm just wondering if this could apply to them as well.

so... very confusing signs?!

Can someone please clear this up for me.
Thanks in advance, this is my first time attempting to breed this species in total I now have 6 garters, a pair of red sided garters, 2 adult female checkered, a young albino checkered female and a very young male, still a toothpick

Hope you can sort me out.
Warren - South Africa

[guidofatherof5]

Warren,
I'm not sure about the slime stuff issue. Gravid females can be very restless and show many of the signs you've described.

I am a purist, so I see the intensional cross breeding of garter snakes as a complete no-no. It muddys up the gene pool.
If she does deliver babies they should never be bred and in my opinion should be kept in your control for the rest of their lives.
I know that cross breeding can occur when two garter ranges cross but that is in nature and out of our control.
I am not trying to tell you what to do but am just giving you my opinion with the purity of the species in mind.
Just because we can put them together doesn't mean we should.

Nice to see you back on the forum, I did not mean to offend you with this post.

[gregmonsta]

What Steve said .... hybridisation is not welcome and not accepted by serious keepers in the hobby. I hope nothing comes of this or if it does - that you have enough space to keep them for their life-spans or - put them down once they are born.

Edit - It also worth noting that future litters may also be polluted by this mating.

[gregmonsta]

Another thing to consider is that Garters in your Hobby circle are extremely limited. Selling any potential offspring from this mating will 1) send out the wrong message to other keepers where you are based and 2) will doom garter keeping in your area from the outset - starting with a muddied genepool will affect everyone's chances of getting what they paid for (ie - a pure parietalis or marcianus).

You cannot treat garters as one kind of snake. You're crossing two separate species.

[ConcinusMan]

I've had a lot of people asking me about that. Wanting to cross garter species to come up with "cool new garters" or however they put it. It's not cool at all. We see a lot of interesting hybrids of other species such as corns, kings, milks, and we see a trend in the hobby of more and more people crossing those. If you want to crossbreed snakes then please do so with those species that are already being crossed.

It's not cool to do it with garter snakes. We don't want to see that trend happen with garter snakes.

To answer your question, I usually don't see anything unusual when a garter is gravid, other than rapid weight gain. They usually don't start behaving different until they are close to giving birth. You say this is a Dec. breeding so it's not likely she's giving birth soon. I don't know what to say about her strange behavior. I've seen tail wagging and restlessness when a snake is agitated or in pain. Hard to say what is causing her to be this way.

If you have a scale that can weigh her in grams, and you see a steady, sharp increase in weight over the next month, then she is likely gravid.

[warbot]

Thanks for the replies everyone, I will take pics and freeze them and use them as a snack for my bosc as soon as they are born.

I was told this happens naturally throughout their range, so didn't think much about it, sorry I won't make a mud pool.

I am just learning this species at the moment because there is so limited info from the current kept species here in South-Africa.

So I am trying to take down behavioral changes as I go long for reference and compare with other Colubrids.

I am quite a big breeder on other animals, this season I have managed to double clutchLampropeltis getula nigrita 13 eggs of the first and 11 from the second, babies when born was on average of 1 2cm, all 13 from the first clutch hatched 9 of the other 11 are still going, I also have Timon lepida sp, or wall lizard, eggs, 9 and more coming, have hatched some geckos and Telescopus species etc....

those are my latest for this season, so I am not completely a newby to the breeding thing, but this is my first live bearing.

So if anyone can give the signs I must look out for, and only for my knowledge purposes.

It would be appreciated, and no offense was taken, I did not know I was doing harm to system, over here in South-Africa if they could breed bulls with corns they would... so I was going with the flow.

[warbot]

Oh and another thing, I know some people trying to cross panthers and carpet chameleons, L. getula nigrita and getula splendida, carpets and gtp's aka carpondroes (spelling ?) East African gaboons with west (one is legal the other isn't) also B. arietans with B. gabonica, and so forth.

So there is allot of that going on in my country, I though they got it from you guys in the US, because you guys are rated some of the best breeders in the world next to Australia.

Sorry again

[guidofatherof5]

We are hoping that crossed garter snakes won't get on the list of such things.
"Just because we can doesn't mean we should"

[warbot]

Point taken thanks steve

[gregmonsta]

Oh and another thing, I know some people trying to cross panthers and carpet chameleons, L. getula nigrita and getula splendida, carpets and gtp's aka carpondroes (spelling ?) East African gaboons with west (one is legal the other isn't) also B. arietans with B. gabonica, and so forth.

So there is allot of that going on in my country, I though they got it from you guys in the US, because you guys are rated some of the best breeders in the world next to Australia.

Sorry again

No need to say sorry mate. It's perfectly understandable with the infancy of garter keeping in your country.
Thankfully, as much as hybrids are quite a curiousity even here in Europe an the USA, garters have avoided this. Mostly due to the fact that the variety that is out there already (the numerous species/subspecies) and the natural colours already give everything you could want. Considering the smaller genepools of Europe the last thing you want is a mongrel snake suddenly spoiling your breeding plans.
Garter hybrids generally look like something that already exists so is basically pointless.
Garters will integrade in the wild (two subspecies sharing the same territory) but as a general rule species tend not to. Certainly checkered x red-sided is extremely unlikely in the wild and I've never seen a hint of this anywhere.