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giant african land snail

Do you want to make money? Have you ever head of snail farming, a niche whose supply has never been able to meet demand?

Although snail farming appear to be a strange type of farming for most Zimbabweans, its appeal to specific niches is a potential for loads of profits. Snails belong to the mollusk class of animals which are animals with one muscular foot and soft bodies, thus requiring them to have shells.

A few examples include oysters, clams and mussels. Snails are generally classified into three groups which are land, freshwater and sea snails.

The world has more than five hundred different species of snail spread all over the continents. Snails without a large conspicuous shell are called slugs and no snails.

Like mushroom, I have always come across snails as a kid in woods especially during the rainy seasons thus making them a seasonal animal. It will be a miracle finding snails during dry seasons. Do people eat snails? I wondered back then if they were edible. In some parts of Ghana, Nigeria and other African countries, snails are eaten. Portugal, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Belgium, Cyprus, parts of China and USA, snails are used as food. Urbanisation and other activities which disrupt the ecosystem have reduced nature’s supply of snails and hence snail farming is now a necessity. In the past snail farming wasn’t necessary. Just a walk in the forest was enough. Setting up a snail farming venture requires a reasonable amount of capital and little time to yield the full grown snails.
This type of mollusk does best in areas of both high rainfall and humidity. An average temperature of 28 degrees and natural average annual rainfall of 60 centimeters gives the best environment for snail farming.

How to practice snail farming
Snail farming begins by buying or collecting snails from the forest keeping them in an appropriate environment, and feeding them so that they multiply. Then you can sell them to make money. They are also sometimes dried for use as medicine.

How can somebody start raising snails?
The moment you start thinking of snail farming, take a walk in the woods and see the conditions snails thrive. Think about why snails live in the forest and what they are likely eating as food. What conditions in the forest favour snails? Because, if you want to bring them inside the house, you must create conditions that resemble the forest in which they live. If you bring them to a dry place, they will die.

Snail farming basics
Dig a pit which is 2 x 1 x 1 metre (l x w x h). Lay two layers of bricks at the bottom of the pit. Fill the pit with a little more than one-half metre of topsoil. Top soil is used because of its ability to preserve moisture thus using other types of soils which can quickly dry up will end up killing the snails and thus killing your bank account.. Add approximately 10 cm of dry leaves, especially banana leaves or other leaves which do not easily rot and has high moisture retention. The remaining area – a depression about 10 to 15 cm deep, will be where the snails come out to feed and where water and food would be placed.

Life Span of snails
Life span of snails is mainly depended on the species and is habitat, thus snail farmers should make sure that the habitat is favorable and the species is the best. Some other species live for about five years whilst others have long been believed to live up to twenty years.

Snail safety measures
Cover the pit with a net which will stops the snails from leaving the pit, and prevents predators like frogs and lizards entering as well as flies which may contaminate the pit. Erect a shade for the entire pit to avoid direct sunlight. The shade should be made from wood as wood is a bad conductor of heat.

How can a farmer find snails to raise?
For a start, a walk in the wood is all you need. Wash the snails in well with clean water and separate the healthy from the ailing. Put the healthy ones in a basket shut with a lid and kip them in a cool place for about three days. When you open up the basket, you will easily notice the healthy snails and the unhealthy. The healthy onew will be your start up seed for your project. Put approximately fifty adult snails in one pit. If they are still small, you should double the figure.

What do snails eat?
Sometimes refered to as agricultural and garden pests, snails eat green vegetables. They are herbivores eating vegetation such as leaves, stems and flowers. They have thousands of nano like teeth structures situated on their radula which breaks the food into small pieces. Thus a snail farmer can feed them with leaves, cabbages, and any green leaves except for grasses. To spice up their diet, a farmer can also give his snails bananas, oranges and pineapples just to mention a few. As a rule of thumb, any vegetation and fruits humans eat, snails can also eat. Drinking water which is also used a swimming pond should also be added to the pit. Snails generally feed at night and as such food should also be provided at night. Calcium to strength their shells can be administered through egg shells.

Reproduction Process
Snails are hermaphrodites thus both male and female snails are capable of laying a minimum of 150 eggs each season. For a snail to lay eggs, it has to mate with another first. The eggs will be laid within that month of mating. The natural season for laying eggs is the rainy season but if your pit is always moist, snails can lay eggs anytime. The eggs take about one month to hatch. If you leave the eggs in the old pit, the bigger snails may eat the smaller snails. Snails take about two full years to grow to full maturity. Then they can be eaten!

Show me snail farming money – fast money or snail pace
There is an old saying which goes “a snail’s pace” meaning things happening slowly. Snails move at about 1.3cm per second and the biggest question is, does the money also come at that snail’s pace? Although snails don’t move fast, they move at a steady speed. The profits are also steady once they start coming

Snails have high demand both in Africa and abroad with the French leading the snail consumption log worldwide mainly cooked in Burgundy’s famous butter, garlic and parsley recipe or in variations with wine and cheese. Snails are one of the delicacies saved in their traditional dishes and supply has never been able to meet the demand.

The Helix Aspersa snail’s average selling price at the time of writing this article was EUR 4.00/Kilograms and orders usually come in tones. Greece is one of the notable countries were snail farming is done for the export market. Fast food restaurants, hotels are the major customers of snails. A lot of private buyers are daily requesting for quotations to buy snail from anywhere in the world.

The giant African Land snail has also been known in the export markets and has the advantage of growing up to 10 inches and 2pounds.

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To your continued success