Latest aquisitions- On August 8 2011, I aquired a nice sized group of babies that are F1 offspring to the wild caught Piebald eastern garter (pics below courtisy of Chuck Hurd). These babies were produced under the care of Bill Minick. They were sired by wild caught males from the same local and the original female. Lots of plans for these guys in the future obviously
Piebald female eastern garter
Picture below of a couple of the potiential het piebald eastern garter snake hatchlings in the group
03/17/11 St. Patricks day pickup, what a nice way to celebrate the holiday. This female is very good sized and dog tame. Hopefully next year she will make some great looking babies. If I can locate a male in the next month or two may even get some babies this spring yet.
  
10/30/10 Picked up 3 new semifasciatus (chicago) females that will be bred by the green axanthic. One seems to be normal looking, one is lacking any yellow (classic axanthic look?), and one that is completely lacking any black pigment (hypomelanistic?), of course these are unproven traits. The one I am most excited to breed the green axanthic to is the hypomelanistic because if you take away the black on the green axanthic in theory you would be left with a solid green snake, which would be really neat looking. The hypomelanistic is in my oppinion the most likely to prove to be a genetic trait, because if you look at her she is completely stripped of black and you can see the faint remnants where the black neck bars should be and in the right light you can barely see the checkerboard patter, it's really a super cool looking snake in person.
Normal female
Female lacking yellow (possible axanthic)
Hypomelanistic female
 9/24/10 Talk about a lucky find!!! I have been walking at lunch around a walking/biking trail lately to help get back in shape and the other day I found a ringneck smashed by a bike on the trail. The trail cuts through a rolling hill area with wild tall grass prairie, with small creeks in the valleys, perfect garter habitat. Today I was walking on the trail and I saw a snake on the trail and I figured it was probably a garter killed by a bike, but as I got closer it started to move so I ran up and caught it, thinking I would have a look at it and then let it go, but once I had it in my hands I realized how gorgeous it was and could not believe it, I was stunned. I had heard there was a wild population of red radix in the area, but in the 42 yrs that I have lived in the area I have never seen one by where I live, but apparently they live right by where I work. Additionally this snake is a female, not sure who I will breed her to this spring but it will either be the blue axanthic or the iowa albino, or possibly the wild caught nebraska albino below. She has a really orange dorsal stripe and redish brown background color. What an amazing find!!!
 
7/1/10 Just received a young female from Chad Howser that was caught within 100yrds of the albino in Dodge Co. Nebraska, what an amazing find, thanks tons Chad!!! She looks exactly as I would have guessed. She has a lot of red color and just like the albino the very orange dorsal stripe that fades as it goes back towards the tail. She also has some interesting orange spots on her head and under her tail. Super stoked about this because with this female I can now produce a locale specific new line of red albino plains garter. Not to mention strengthen an existing line if they prove out to be compatible.
06/17/10 Wow, talk about an exciting week, this week I aquired some amazing new animals.
First and foremost today I aquired a newly found wild caught Albino plains garter T. radix.
This snake was aquired from Chad Howser, this snake was found in Dodge Co. in Nebraska, about 50 miles west of Omaha. This general area is rich with morphs and has produced several albinos and erythristic (red) radix over the years. This albino was found in the general region were my red radix was found that I aquired from Ian Cambell last year. I got lucky because this snake was caught about a month ago and pictures were posted of it on a local pet shops facebook page, but luckily it didn't receive a ton of attention otherwise I would have maybe got in a bidding war, like the other wild caughts this year and I would have come up short. Lucky for me I had talked with Chad several times last year about corn snakes that I had for sale and so he knew I was big into garters and contacted me first. I paid a pretty penny for this snake but I love it even though I will not likely make my money back any time soon. It is a male, was actually hoping it was a female and I was going to breed it to my Ian Cambell red radix, but I have a couple other ideas now. I would like to breed it to a locality female first to keep the strain locality, before making other crosses. I believe this snake may end up being compatible to the current Nebraska albino strain or Iowa strain, however it may not, and while it has some similarities in appearance it has some definately distiguishing characteristics as well and I belive that is has some of the red radix characteristics as well. This animal has a much lighter and duller straw colored background color, the eyes are lighter, yet a much darker orange dorsal stripe, and has orange color surrounding the dark checkers on the sides, and it has a pinkish/orangish ghostly look to it, which is why I believe it has red parentage. Update he has eaten twice now so over the first hurdle.
 
 
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