T. ordinoides Kryptonite

[guidofatherof5]

This evening before the sun went down I ventured out into the backyard to collect a few slugs for my Northwesterns. After collecting about 50 and a few night crawlers I headed down to the snake room.
My boy Flicker, SR-71 and a couple others have been off food, refusing earthworms and night crawlers. These snakes think they are strong but not strong enough to resist slugs.
I found Flicker under the warm hide and he apparently smelled the slugs as he came out in a hurry. I shovel a few in him and turned my attention to SR-71. Once the slug was within striking distance that's exactly what he did. The other holdouts were also helpless to resist the power of the slugs. I was fortunate to find a number of small slugs so the 4 younger snakes also enjoy the feast.
It was fun to watch the little ones dealing with their first slug slime. For a few of them, their strategy was to wash the slime down with another slug.
I love my Northwesterns.

[ConcinusMan]

For a long time when i first got him, slugs were the only thing that got a feeding response out of him. Took a year for me to get him to eat a pinky.

[CrazyHedgehog]

I tried feeding slugs many years ago, and ended up with lots of very slimey tanks, and none were eaten.. In my inexperience, I tried to wash some of the slime off first before giving them, but this just seemed to make them excrete even more!. While part of me thinks I am never going to do this again, there is also the point of if this is better for the garters....

so, is there a specific slug? are all slugs ok? (not washed obviously) . I have heard mention of a banana slug, but I don't think we get them here in the UK.

[ConcinusMan]

Many of the small slugs we find over here in our back yards are native to Europe.

I find these and the smaller ones make fine garter food.


The trick is to pick ones small enough to be swallowed quickly, and to collect them when they are at rest and not being handled or attacked. That's when they pour on the slime. Your touching, handling, washing is the problem. If they're small and not on the defense, they get swallowed rather quickly before they have a chance to produce all that slime. I just find them at rest sticking to the bottom of whatever they're hiding under. A quick "flick" knocks them off onto a plastic lid or whatever, then you can just place the lid in a feeding enclosure without them knowing they're being attacked, and without all the slime.

Banana slugs are a huge yellow slug found on the CA coast and wild infernalis' eat them. That's where you heard of that slug. I wouldn't recommend trying to feed those to your garters. They're huge and the slime is 100% worse than your average garden slug. Similar to the european black slug (got those here too in forests)

I have tons of garden slugs (free snake food!) right now but my concinnus' wouldn't touch them. I just "flicked" them from their resting spot, into a container and swirled them fish "juice" real quick then dumped them into a feeding tray in the enclosure. That's all it took. Now my concinnus' have bulging bellies full of slugs. Something different for a change.

They're easy to gut load too. You can keep them in a container for a day or two and load them up with nutritious veggies and a light dusting of calcium. yummy.