Garter Snakes
Buying Garter Snakes
Snakes -> Garter Snakes -> Buying Garter Snakes
Buying garter snakes is relatively easy - with such a common and widespread species found across most of the USA, both wild-caught and captive bred specimens can be sourced.
Of course there is also a chance that wild caught adult females may be gravid and so give birth some time later.
Like most species of reptile, captive-bred individuals inevitably do better containing few if any parasites, being used to food commonly available to the snake keeper from an early age.
They also adapt better to the confines of captivity than a wild caught garter snake that is more fmailiar with roaming free.
When buying garter snakes your purchase should involve two aspects - ins[ecting your potential new pet itself for good health, and questioning the seller.
However it is worth spending some time here discussing what questions would be pertanent to ask the seller.
Here are a few examples of helpful questions you may like to ask when buying garter snakes:
- Is this specimen wild caught or captive bred?
- What species is it (allows you to guage the maximum adult size and helpful if you decide you'd like a mate for it later)
- What is the latin name of this species?
- Have you kept a record of it's feeding and skin-changes?
- What is this specimen used to being fed on?
- Can I see the parent garter snakes?
- How many garter snakes do you breed each year?
- Has this specimen been regularly handled?
- When was this specimen born?
- Do you have other specimens of this species that I can look at?