Blackbelly Garter snake mega post

[annulataarethebest]

Hmm where to start...
Last season when Scott Felzer produced the Blackbelly Garters from Central America(?) I happened to grab a trio of them. I kept the 3 of them in a single tub in my hatchling snake rack, minus the keeping them together part I pretty much kept them like how I keep kingsnakes and milks. Whenever I was able to get around to getting feeder fish they would get 2 dozen rosies in a waterbowl and they would eat most of them, whatever they didn't eat would be eaten the next day. All of them shed at least once a month and grew quick like most garters do...



Out of that trio the 2 biggest ones resemble little anacondas, which supposedly is what the typical blackbelly garter specimen looks like. The smaller one, which I'm assuming is the male doesn't really look like the females... (the male is in the lower left corner of the next pic)



Here's the one anaconda lookalike female in her new enclosure...



Here's the other one in my hand...



Here she is in the tank...



THEN, Joe P offered me some more blackbelly garters, which of course I couldn't pass up..
The one is a patternless greenish male, he's an adult I think but my younger-than-yearling females are already as big as him. It wasn't easy to get a good pic of this guy yesterday that's for sure. This is the only half decent pic of him I got.

[annulataarethebest]

What I was REALLY looking forward to is this little female blackbelly garter, the red form. This snake is so awesome looking, kind of looks like a pine woods snake with a stripe. I don't know if it's a morph or not, but I plan to find out.





I have a feeling these guys will all breed in 2013. I hope I can get them switched to pinky mice, I had one of my original females eat a pinky mouse probably 4 months ago after I dipped in a bowl with some fish in it. Tried a couple times after that and nothing. I've heard they were difficult to get on mice but Scott Felzer said his adults eat unscented rodents.
To me this is one of the coolest garter snake species out, I've yet to be bit by any of them, they rarely musk, and after squiggling around for a minute they settle down. And all you really have to do is put fish in a bowl and the tank comes to life...

(In the bowl is one of my original females, then the original male dipped his head in the water, the red female is to the right of him thinking of a strategy, and the patternless male is to the left)



Here's the red female near the other 2 females.... they just look sooo different.



Anybody else working with these?

[katach]

Gorgeous!

[guidofatherof5]

They look great.
I think switching them to pinks is a good idea.

[Natrix]

They look great, the red phase is really nice.

[chris-uk]

I like the pattern on the original male. Great series of pics.
I don't thinks there are many of these Blackbelly garters being kept, I've not heard of them in Europe at least.

[EasternGirl]

Very lovely.

[BUSHSNAKE]

they are for sure one of the cooler species out there, i love mine. Good to see yours are rocking!

[Stefan-A]

So that's what they look like.

[BUSHSNAKE]

theres 2 red morphs...a red belly kind and a red stripe kind, im gonna breed them together to see how red they can get