Losses in Brumation.

[adamanteus]

Guys, as our regular readers will be aware, quite a few of our members have had Garters die during brumation this year.
So, who's up for a discussion on possible causes and how to avoid these losses in the future?
I haven't looked in on mine since December 20th, I prefer to leave them alone as much as possible at this time.... but I must admit I'm quite paranoid now, in view of other peoples' ill luck, so I'll be giving them all a thorough check tomorrow.
So what do we think? Wrong temps? Wrong humidity? Poor preparation? Or just plain bad luck?
This shouldn't be viewed as any kind of attack on those of us who have lost snakes during brumation, but rather as an opportunity to assess what we do and try to improve on it in the future.
Comments please.

[Zephyr]

Wrong humidity. I think that they should be kept a little moister, at least northern species, than we originally thought.

[adamanteus]

Wrong humidity. I think that they should be kept a little moister, at least northern species, than we originally thought.

Can you explain how you came to that conclusion, Kyle?

[Zephyr]

Can you explain how you came to that conclusion, Kyle?

I kept the substrate in the chamber I had my females in nearly bone dry. They had a large dish of water to soak in that I made sure was full. Apparently, even with a full dish of water, the humidity wasn't high enough. I think there may have been something to do with how they breathe at lower temperatures and moisture levels... Something along those lines... Some of the brumation resource websites I've checked say that dens are generally near rivers, lakes, etc. The den I found last year was on a river.

[snakeman]

What kind of substrate?I prefer the papertowels because the snakes run in and out of the bowl. getting the towels wet.With the lower temps I never had a blister problem.I really don't think garters need to brumate for 3 months.They are in and out of brumation all winter long.It was about 60 outside today.I am willing to bet garters were out today.

[ssssnakeluvr]

I don't know for sure....but natural causes is one possibility....Scott has lost a couple pretty much every year....but then he has several hundred snakes! when I brumated mine a few years ago in a fridge, I lost a bunch to humidity problems... wandering dens aren't always neat water...

[infernalis]

Just as an observation guys, The snakes here favor abandoned gopher burrows, the water table in my valley is rather close to the surface, the humidity down in those gopher burrows is very high.

I know this because I have dug with a backhoe and at 6-8 feet down my hole will start taking on water. The holes MUST be below the frost line, not necessarily for the snakes, But the gophers hibernate down in those holes for the winter.

So reasoning and logic say that it has to be damp in those burrows.

I recently lost 3 snakes to dehydration, and they were not in brumation at all, the air was just too dry.

As I said at the onset of this posting, nothing more than my observation, and not supportive nor unsupported to why these snakes perished in captive brumation.

My mind says high humidity this time of year has to factor into the equation somehow.

BTW James EXCELLENT topic for discussion, I will certainly be reading every single post made in this thread.

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

I think that for us to truely know what is best for our garters during brumation, data from a wide range of dens, near and far from water, for a bunch of different species would need to be sampled. As well as the overall health of the snakes in the different conditions... and which types snakes frequent the most. I think that if we were able to do that, we would find that not all garter snake dens are the same conditions across the board. Some will be dry, some will be damp, some will be cooler or warmer and some will have hundreds of snakes, while others just a few, but all will still carry snakes through a winter to emerge happily in spring. My dad accidentally dug up a small den of about 40 snakes about a month ago. They were in the middle of a field... near the top of a hill... no water in sight! They were just packed tightly together in the ground, literally every empty crevice had been filled with snake coils! None of the snakes got hurt but unfortunately he had destroyed their den. I hope they made it somewhere else in time.

We only know one thing for certain... temps near freezing are bad, and temps that allow them to be active for too much of their brumation have a negative effect as well. I am willing to bet that parasites may play a role in the deaths of some of our snakes during brumation. If the wrong snake catches the wrong thing, he could live without any ill effects because his body is able to keep things in check...and he does alright with it until brumation comes along and slows him down, it gives the bugs the edge and while most parasites do not aim to kill their host, when their host is vulnerable, inactive... etc, sometimes they can over-do it and kill them anyways.

Humidity I am sure is an issue, but the question is, is it too wet, or too dry? Wouldn't the snakes show some kind of respiratory distress before suddenly dropping dead? My snakes are being brumated in "dry" cages, but the hygrometer says the air humidity is 70 to 80 percent down there.

[infernalis]

Very well thought out and said Shannon.

Reminds me of the old car I ripped from the ground a few years back, It was buried, but not real deep, and the main "fill" was old garbage that the previous owners of the land had dumped there.

Chances are, it was no where near as moist as the gopher holes, yet it was a very "popular" den.

[drache]

my thoughts on the matter are very much like Shannon's
garters have evolved to survive in many different conditions and one answer is just not going to fit all of them
additionally, while many are extremely tolerant of all sorts of conditions, there may be some specific local subspecies that might need a pretty specific range, in terms of temps as well as humidity