Garter ideas

[GarterGuy]

Hello all,
I'm working on a breeding setup for garters and I'm getting everything squared away with what I'm getting for it. I've got a female T.s.concinnus that I'm getting a male for; getting a pair of green T.s.pallidulus from Ryan at Valley Pets and hopefully getting a pair of T.s.pickeringii from Marian. The setup I have has 6 2'X2' cages and 2 4'X2' cages in it. I'm going to put the each T.s.pallidulus in one of the 2'X2' cages(from everything I've found, they stay small); the male T.s.concinnus and T.s.pickeringii will take two more of the 2'X2' cages and the female T.s.concinnus and pickeringii will share a 4'X2' cage. This leaves me with two 2'X2' and a 4'X2' cage. I'd like to work with one more Thamnophis species or subspiecies in addition to the ones I'm already getting. I'd like to work with a larger (as far as garters go) snake and some things that's just different. I know a lot of you out there work with a lot of different stuff, so thought I'd just through it out there and see if there are any garters that you think would be good to work with. One I'm interested in (I actaully have something in the classifieds about this) are the T.radix that come out of the Saskatchawan area of Canada. They look good sized and the colours on them are just spectacular. I don't know if I can get them though, so still very open to suggestions.
Thanx.......Roy

[paclc1]

why do you have the males and females separated from each other?

[GarterGuy]

I'm doing this so I can control the breeding of the snakes. Also after breeding them, an overly zealous male can continue to harrass a female that's already bred and I don't want that to happen. This way I can put the females in with the males to breed them and them seperate them so the females can gestate in peace.
Roy

[ssssnakeluvr]

are you getting adults?? the 4x2 cages will be too big for neonates...will have trouble finding food. 2x2 would be ok. the other is good for adults. I usually keep mine separated all year. I hibernate breeding pairs together, then leave them together for about 3 weeks after bringing them out of hibernation.