Snails Farming: Healing The Body, Enriching Pockets

HAVE you wondered how to put the open moist space in your backyard into economic use? Or how to turn part of your uncompleted building, lying fallow for years, into activities that could rake in money? If so, think no more, as snail farming could effectively fill in the void and provide some money, while your are still on your work.

Aside from complementing human protein needs, snail farming is easy to start and does not involve many hands or much labour.

Like any cottage production, snail farming could be carried out in one’s backyard. It does not involve a very large space, hardly falls sick and could eat leftover foods as well as grasses to survive. Besides, anybody going into the business does not have to spend fortunes constructing pens or to create a near natural habitat for them, as snail could breed well in wooden counters.

Snail farming brings quick returns on investment, especially with species like the Achatina Achatina, which when properly handled could exceed their 200-400 eggs in one batch two to three times a year.

With low capital investment, low recurrent expenditure, low labour and high yield, snail farming could be done on a full time or part time basis depending on one’s choice.

For Sam Uko, snail farming is one of the unknown goldmines many Nigerians are yet to know. According to him, apart from supplementing human protein needs, snail remains a very valuable animal to man.

“Snail is very important to man; its meat is low in cholesterol, sodium and fat, which makes it good for hypertensive patients. Some people use the mucus from snail to treat different coughs and to prepare different healing substances. Apart from being used for this purpose, some people eat it to prevent or stop arteriosclerosis, hemorrhoids and constipation.

“It is also said to help hematopoiesis (blood formation) in anaemia patients and rich in iron, calcium, amino acids, phosphorus and protein. Little wonder why some people, especially pregnant women, make it their choice meat and would do anything to get it.

“I make between N200,000 and N300,000 every month from snails. I sell to restaurants, hotels and different eateries. This business is quite a money-spinning one; it has no stress, does not consume much time and yet, has a very high return to my capital.

“It has changed my social status and enables me to travel to different to places supplying snails. I started from a rented compound and from the proceeds I made, I have moved to my house and now doing it full time,” he said.

If the business is rosy and easy to enter, why then are many Nigerians not into it, especially with the present rise in unemployment among the youths?

Oscar disclosed that ignorance and the inability to try new things have caused many Nigerians not to take advantage of the business. According to him, some people for cultural and religious reasons would not have anything to do with snails; they see them as unclean animals and avoid them like a plague. He added that those that really know the good inherent in animal are farming snail for business, selling it as food and ingredient for traditional medicine.

“Our weather is good for snail farming and studies have shown that snail meat has a very rich food value. So, for improved health, some people are substituting beef and livestock with snail, which has increased demand,” he said.

Since there are a few snail farms how are they able to meet up with the demand?

“ Yes, snails are hermaphrodites, they possess both male and female reproductive organs and can self-fertilise, which means there is nothing like replenishing ones stock. A snail can reproduce itself without a mate. And even where they mate, individual snails lay about 80 to100 eggs in three to six days after mating and this is done six times a year; imagine the number of snails that would be from just a snail. So, it is a boom to have many of them in the pen.

“All you need do is to sacrifice one year, because it takes between one to two years for a snail to mature. And after that, you will be selling hundreds of them in a month or two, depending on the size of one’s farm and how one has been able to keep the snails.

“The market price of three big snails is between N200 to N700, depending on the place and time of the day or year. If you then multiply this into a hundred or thousand you would get what some of us make farming snails,” he revealed.

Though mainly a nocturnal animal, snails need a good environment like dim moist place with plenty of grass to breed. This is the reason you see many of them during rainy season. They also feed on a range of plant matter and spend the day, often in large groups, under stones, grasses or any structure that can give them shade.

Explaining conditions that can aid good production of snail, Dan Ogaga revealed that humidity, temperature and light are key in the reproductive process of snails.

“Humidity, temperature and lighting must be regulated if one is to achieve optimum production. Snails produce more when there is constant equilibrium between the water in their tissues and the relative humidity of the environment. This would also make the snail grow fast and big. Ability to manage these factors will ultimately affect the production capacity of one’s farm and increase profitability.

Ogaga stressed that the best way to achieve this, is to have a built-up environment, where one could observe the snails and provide the right misting capability needed.

Though different specie produce better at different temperature, it is important the farmer understands the optimum production temperatures for the each specie, so that the snails do not shut down by secreting mucus to seal their shells. Snails adopt this means to protect themselves.

“Remember, once the snail shuts down there is no more growth, which is bad for business. Going into hibernation or dormancy only makes it last longer for you to grow the snail to market size, which automatically affects profitability. So, to get the best from snails the farmer should endeavour to provided the right conditions for them,” Ogaga stated.

Advising farm owners to observe the various conditions necessary for farm increase, Francis Adigwe noted that a new entrant can begin a snailery with used tyres or construct a pen at his/her backyard to prevent the snails from wandering and escaping.

“With a space as little as 5m x 2m one can conveniently grow 400 to 700 snails to maturity. Snails are docile and with good management mortality you can produce more. This would, aside from adding to your finance give you an alternative to meat,” he said.

Starting small would entail going about looking for their food. According to Yewande, this is not a problem because snails feed on variety of items found in their habitat.

“What they consume depend on where they live and their specie. Snails are cheap to maintain because they eat common items like plants (fresh and decaying), fruits, vegetables and algae. They eat those things we refer to as dirt —- carrots, spoilt bread and others. This means they can get their food when they move freely in their pen, so far, you do not use herbicides or pesticides on the plants or dirt around them, because this would kill them without the farmer realising it.

“However, there are other species that are carnivores (eats flesh and insects) and omnivores (eats flesh, insects and plant). But the Achatina Achatina species commonly found in West Africa, which lays 200 to 400 eggs in one batch twice or thrice a year would be good for any beginner to start with. The special breed of Achatina Achatina is capable of producing 1,000,000 eggs twice a year, which is good business to any farmer that knows how to handle them,” she noted.

Things To Note When Going Into Snail Farming
• Guard the snails against predators like snakes, birds, lizards, frogs, worms and even other species of snails.
• Know the type of snails to farm, because not all snails are edible. And to be well informed about this, it would be better to go for short training on snailery.
• Avoid the use of herbicides and pesticides on the grasses near your home if you have a snailery, as this would constitute danger to the snails.
•Do not make the back yard too bushy, prune the grasses, but do not burn them, rather allow them to decay on their own. This is food for the snail.
• Give adequate attention to the snails to observe when they are shutting down and work to correct the cause(s).
• Create a limit for them so that they do not wander away. Do this by fencing the area allotted to them with materials that would not allow them any passage.
•Look for a market and learn how to preserve the unsold to still look fresh.