Baby garter snakes won't eat. Help?!

[gibble888]

So what is the reason some babies wont eat then die? Genetics? Defect? In reality if they dont eat then die isnt that just help to reinforce the gene poole? If you breed a snake that doesnt want to eat wont it have some babies that dont want to eat?

[ConcinusMan]

So what is the reason some babies wont eat then die? Genetics? Defect?

Your guess is a good as any other. Glad you got him eating, but in the context of good numbers of healthy siblings, having a few that do not make it, or in your case, just one(?)... personally I wouldn't bother coddling him but that's just me. He's probably always going to have development issues.

I had a T. radix just like this one. She did end up eating OK but still didn't grow normally. By the time she was 2, she was still 1/3 the size of her siblings and was plagued by stuck sheds. She eventually died anyway after all the effort to save her. The only reason I bothered at all is because she was cariad's offspring and double het for T- and t+ albino and I wanted to breed her to her half brother, a bright orange t- albino. Her dying was probably for the best if this problem had a genetic component.