How To Start Snail Rearing Business

Breeding snails is a lucrative business that few people take into account. Most likely, this is due to the lack of knowledge about how good the snails are for our health and beauty.

In Europe 1 kg of snail meat costs 25-30 euros (the demand is satisfied up to 60-75%). The snail meat has absolutely no bad cholesterol while having excellent taste.

Snail meat is rich in protein and the extract of snails is used in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry: creams made on the basis of snail mucus are an effective remedy against stretch marks, scars (especially post-burn ones), and wrinkles.

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For a start

To start you will be required to register a private enterprise.

You will also have to give the snail meat to the veterinary laboratory, that will check the meat and issue a certificate enabling its sale.

The most popular edible species of snail are Helix pomatia and Achatina fulica.

The wholesale (breeder’s) price of one adult snail is 2-3 dollars while an Achatina will cost you 3,5-4 dollars. Initial broodstock should total 350-400 individuals (7.5-8 kg).

The place for breeding

For farming you will need an area of ??no more than 50 m2, that needs to be organized as a garden. The only condition is that the area has to be fully fenced so the inhabitants could not crawl beyond it – and for their protection as well.

You can prevent the attacks of birds with help of either a transparent canopy installation or by placing a scarecrow in the garden, but even a simple canopy significantly reduces the birds attack.

Living Conditions

Only snails can be bred outdoors, some Achatinas are able to withstand the temperature drop up to 2°C, but due to the inability to hibernate, they begin to die at lower temperatures.

The most important factors are temperature and humidity. Snails will be pleasantly surprised by the absence of cold winter and will be happy not to have to hibernate thus increasing the number of mating periods, while Achatinas will just assume that they are back to Africa where they come from.

The average temperature should be about 23 degrees Celsius, it will be appreciated by the majority of species, not only these two. The soil should be rich in calcium and dirt: the clams will naturally feed on the dirt, getting all the necessary nutrients from it. Weeds and plant leaves are suitable kinds of food too.

It is most necessary to moisturize the place where your clams live, since in dry surroundings they get apathetic, lethargic and can even die very soon. It is important to clean their home every 3 days as well dig up the soil. These procedures will help maintain the necessary moisture level.

The garden plot must be constantly moisturized and protected from direct sunlight –this is another reason for getting a canopy.

The extraction of snail roe

You may find the snail roe during the mating period: careful parents bury it in the soil.

It is better to assign one of the clam “houses” for snail courtship activities. You will have to move the snails there in advance. This way it is possible to extract a considerable number of egg nests at the lowest cost and without disturbing the animals in other “houses”.

Sales

The largest specimens are normally left for breeding, and the rest are sold for food and pharmaceutical purposes. Packages of live snails are of high value, but they make sense only in the case of an established and perfectly organized trade.

Clams can be kept without food for several days, then their shell is taken off, they are quickly deep-frozen and sold like this.

With snails it is possible to use their natural instincts: you can artificially lower the temperature in the room, so they will hide in their shell and dig into the soil. Then the snails are taken from the ground, sorted into 1-kilogram packages and put in a freezer expecting to be shipped to the consumer.

Another promising business is cooperation with pharmaceutical companies: gastropods are used in the production of helecidine being the basis of some medicines to relieve coughing. Chemical industries will be interested in purchasing the snails to produce lectins which are used in industry. At the same time, such cooperation can bring even more substantial income than selling snails for cooking since this way you can also sell unmarketable individuals that cannot be used in food industry.

The profitability of this business can reach up to 90% in case of breeding snails on a farm; it will be somewhat lower in apartment conditions. The payback, however, will take at least two years as it takes a year and a half to get the first batch of the delicacy.