Many animals avoid eating dead prey, which is actually why garter snakes play dead when threatened. Some snakes prefer fish over worms, or vice versa. Here are some common problems and solutions:. Baby garters can be particular about what they eat, especially when you first bring them home. You may have to feed it small pieces of fish, earthworms, platies, and feeder guppies.
Most garters will eat any type of fish, but owners need to be careful with fish because many contain high amounts of thiaminase. Thiaminase is an enzyme that breaks down vitamin B1 thiamine. Note: According to the Journal of Great Lakes Research , the consumption of thiaminase can cause vitamin B1 deficiency, resulting in illness and death. Examples include goldish, anchovy, chubby mackerel, and tuna.
Whole worms, such as bait-store nightcrawlers, are too big for baby garters, unless you cut them up into smaller pieces. A diet of mice provides all of the nutrition that a baby garter snake needs. Try feeding your baby garters very small pinky parts. You may have to slowly transition your snakes to a rodent-based diet by continuing to feed it fish and worms every now and then.
If your baby garter snake has a preference for fish and refuses to eat pinky parts, you can entice it by scenting the pinky parts with fish. A good rule of thumb is to be able to see a bulge, but not so big that the snake looks like it will explode. How to feed them. Garter snakes only require a gallon terrarium. If you feed your pet earthworms, never drop them into a cage lined with wood chips.
Fish can be placed in a water-filled bowl. They like to see their prey moving, so a frozen, lifeless mouse may not seem very appealing. You may have to get creative and do things to create the illusion that the food is moving, such as taking a pair of tongs, holding the mouse and moving it back and forth.
Most garter snakes prefer to swallow their food whole, by the way. We showcase ball pythons, garter snakes, corn snakes, boas and other exciting species. Previous Next. Garter snakes are a tremendously diverse group of species: some are generalists that will eat almost anything; others have a more specialized diet.
For example, ribbon snakes and some of the western aquatic species will not normally eat earthworms or slugs. Some species are better at catching live fish than others. And some are a lot harder to train to eat mice than others. Sometimes this is because of their species. In general, though, garter snakes are extremely unlikely eat to crickets, mealworms or other insect larvae, no matter what the nice person at the pet store told you — they are simply not insectivores.
And all snakes are carnivores; they will not deliberately eat any vegetable matter of any kind. In fact, they are physically incapable of digesting it! Earthworms are deficient in calcium, and fish fillet is not nutritionally complete. I have used a combination of powdered calcium, vitamin B1 as insurance against vitamin B1 deficiency and vitamin D3 to help metabolize the calcium.
Health food stores will have these in tablet form, which you can crush; pet stores will carry powdered calcium supplements. Lightly dust them instead of dredging them in the powder, and do it just before feeding.
Either that, or use liquid calcium supplements, available at pet stores. While vitamin B1 is water-soluble and, as such, theoretically impossible to overdose on, it is possible to get too much calcium and vitamin D3. Most calcium powders include vitamin D3; check the label. A couple of commercial snake diets are on the market, one in the form of sausages and one that is specifically marketed as garter snake food.
While there may not be anything conspicuously wrong with them, they are not cheap and offer no special advantages over natural food. They may be helpful for people who are squeamish with worms or mice, and for those who have trouble acquiring other food sources. How often you feed your snake depends on what you feed it, and how much depends on the size of the snake.
Worm eaters need to be fed more often than fish eaters, which in turn need to be fed more often than mouse eaters. Worm eaters should be fed twice weekly, fish eaters can be fed every five to six days or so, and mouse eaters every week.
Very young garter snakes can eat a bit more frequently than that: they could probably eat every second day on an earthworm diet. Snakes that eat a varied diet can be kept on a constant schedule, despite the different recommended intervals I just mentioned.
You should feed your snake enough to leave a visible bulge, but not so much that the snake is going to burst. A baby snake should get two or three small earthworms collected from the garden, or one-quarter to one-third of a large bait store nightcrawler, or a few feeder guppies, or one large feeder platy, or one-quarter to one-half of a pinky mouse. Smaller, more frequent meals are more easily digested than mammoth, infrequent meals.
In general, baby snakes should be fed frequently. It is possible to overfeed your snake. Do not feed your snake every day or it will become obese. Live fish would be offered in a small, water-filled bowl from which the snakes could catch fish at their leisure. Some garter snakes need their prey to move. Garter snakes are very visual, more so than many other snakes, and respond well to motion.
Also, remember that if the mouse smells funky after thawing, it is not good to feed to your Garter Snake. In the wild, Garter snakes are less likely to eat mice as fish and other smaller prey make up the bulk of their meals.
This also requires that they unhinge their jaw to fit the larger prey into their mouth. Rats are one of the meals that Garter Snakes do not typically eat. Rats tend to be larger in size and they sometimes fight back. For most garter snakes, it is not worth the trouble to try to eat a rat. However, if the rat is a smaller size, perhaps a baby or juvenile, the garter snake may go ahead and eat the rat.
These are not typical meals to be feeding your pet Garter snakes, unless you chop the rat up into smaller pieces that are easier for your garter snake to digest. The rat will not know if there are other predators around and will be less likely to stop by your garden looking for food.
Chipmunks are not a common staple in the Garter snakes diet , but they can eat chipmunks if they are available. Garter snakes can also be a good deterrent for chipmunks that may be getting into your garden and stealing your fruits and veggies. Chipmunks tend to be on the larger side of small mammals, but again if they are smaller like babies or juveniles, garter snakes will go after them for a tasty meal.
The short answer? They may occasionally eat feeder crickets, but they should be few and far between when feeding to your garter snake. Most garter snakes are extremely picky when it comes to insects at all. It may be best to completely cut out the insects from your Garter Snakes diet. In the wild, Garter Snakes typically avoid eating insects as they have other options available to them that taste better. It is not even worth catching spiders to have your Garter Snake try to eat.
As stated above, there are far many more better tasting options to feed your Garter Snake. However, in the wild Garter Snakes are left to eat whatever they have available to them. This means that spiders are not entirely out of the question. They are definitely not the first choice of Garter Snakes but if they have no other options , they will make a snack out of spiders. Slugs are a favorite treat for Garter Snakes.
In the wild, slugs can be a pest to many gardeners, so Garter Snakes take care of the slugs for them. For any gardener who has a slug problem, a Garter Snake is a welcome sight in the garden.
Not only are slugs a great snack for Garter Snakes in the wild, they are also a good food option for your Garter Snake in captivity. Slugs can be fed to your Garter Snake alive, and your Garter Snake may welcome a moving target. They will swallow the slug whole after rapidly advancing on the slug. Most snake species find chicken eggs to be a delicacy.
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