Quote Originally Posted by d_virginiana View Post
It's better not to. In the wild they would eat frogs and toads, but most frogs/toads you would catch have parasites.
Not only that but garters are generally only immune to newt/toad toxins if the snakes and the newts/toads are from the same area and evolved together. A snake population that exists in a location without newts and toads often has no, or limited immunity. Immunity and toxicity of the animals will vary from location to location too.

Just consider that if you're talking about toxic food, it should only come from the same place your snake is from and wild amphibians are the intermediate host for a myriad of harmful parasites. With that said, freezing them at very cold temperatures (0-10 F) will kill most, if not all of the parasites. However, WC amphibians can also a source of heavy metals and other pollutants, particularly large frogs (such as pollution tolerant American Bullfrogs) that feed on other vertebrates.

I have collected tree frog eggs before and raised them indoors and used the captive hatched and raised tadpoles and froglets though. They're great for getting non-feeding babies to start eating and they're easy to raise on flake fish food. I would say if you captive hatch the eggs and raise them up they're safe. Bullfrogs can go from tiny egg to 2-inch tadpole in as little as 50 days. They'll get even bigger if you keep them cool and oxygenate the water well. That also delays their transformation into adults for up to 3 years. Way easier than trying to raise fish if you ask me, so if you find egg masses in early spring, give it a try. All you need is basically a bucket of water and flake food.