Even though I have milksnakes, corns and kings, I have always wanted to try and collect as many different garter snakes as I could, in an economical way. I don't suppose anyone would be interested in swapping specimens of their local species for our plains and red-sided garters?
Garters in the wild eat more worms than mice. Mice are kind of a big food item and hard to overcome, because garters do not have poison or the ability to constrict. If they happen upon a nest of babies, then they will gorge themselves.
The benefit of feeding your pet garter pinky mice (or whatever size they can handle), is that mice are a complete food item: you do not need to sprinkle supplement vitamins on them. A steady diet of just worms can lead to calcium and other supplement defieciency that they would not get just being in the wild.
Cool snake, Tim, no doubt about it. And yes, lol, their best line of defense is musk, instead of biting.
regards,
Joe