Among people there are many lovers of seafood, octopuses, squids - cephalopods, or shrimps, mussels, crayfish and crabs are especially popular. The gastropods are much less commonly used, and snail breeding is currently an aid only to those who work with restaurants offering Greek, Spanish, Italian, or French cuisine.
Snail like food
The gastropod mollusks carry a conch on their back; there are a great many species of them, but all of them are called the same - snails. In many countries of Europe, this is not even a delicacy, but a daily meal, which it became in the distant Middle Ages, and certainly not from a good life. However, now they are relished by the most fastidious gourmets. There is evidence that even in ancient Greece, snail breeding was a frequent profession. This is much easier than growing vegetables, wheat or cattle.
In Russia, this food is still exotic; in Russian cuisine, meat is not only snails, but also "marine reptiles" is practically not used. But restaurants of certain cuisines of the world are increasingly appearing with us, including those with such delicacies, and therefore there is a demand for breeding snails. Today, you can easily buy a kilogram package with gastropod meat, although it cannot be said that the demand for it is completely satisfied. For those who want to occupy this almost empty niche, this article is intended.
Start
Snail breeding has a huge advantage over any other food business. They can be grown both in a rural house or in the country, and in a city apartment. To start the cultivation of edible snails, you need to register a business entity, where indicate the code 10.20 (OKPD 2) - "Canned and processed fish, mollusks and crustaceans".
Then you need to get advice from the veterinary service with subsequent authorization. This is not free, so you need to have at least fifty thousand rubles in your pocket to get all kinds of papers. The breeding and cultivation of snails refers to regulated production, where there are a variety of technical regulations, since water resources are used. Legislation in this case may vary significantly by region - somewhere this activity is limited, somewhere encouraged. But additional permissions will probably be needed, since snail breeding is supposed to be a business.
Kinds
Most likely, the meat of the first batch of mollusks will have to be returned to the laboratory, where it is carefully checked, and a permit will be issued as a result of this check. It is this practice that exists in our country, regardless of the region. The most interesting thing is that snails are most often sold alive. They are not fed for several days for purification, then they are also offered alive to the buyer. Breeding edible snails is not too difficult, because this living creature is unpretentious. Yes, and you can contain them with an almost complete absence of hassle.
Traditionally in demand is the cultivation of grape snails - Helix pomatia. This is the most common species, spread throughout the central and southern territories of the Russian Federation. They are quite large and nutritious, and they have been eaten since the times of antiquity in Western countries. Achatina fulica is a different species, and breeding of Achatina snails is much more difficult, unlike grapevines. They are residents of the southern latitudes, and natural survival in our harsh climate is completely impossible for them.If she lived in the nature of European countries with a mild climate, the locals would not be happy - this is an exceptionally fruitful pest of agricultural plants.
Differences
Distinguish these species from each other is not difficult. Achatina is much larger, but grape meat is more nutritious and healthy. The complexity of the farm for breeding snails Achatina is no different from that which specializes in grape, at least initially in cost and content, they are almost equivalent. The only and fundamental difference is that if snails are kept in the fresh air, then Achatina, like Africans, will not survive our winter, but grapevines fall into hibernation, and therefore they are not afraid of any frost.
Most often, those and others are bred on farms, this diversifies the assortment. This also includes the cultivation of snails ampoule. There are many other species that are quite suitable for food: Sphincterochila candidisima, Theba pisana, Cepæa nemoralis, Iberus alonensis, Otala vermiculata, Otala lactea, Archelix punctata, Helix lucorum, Helix hortensis, Helix aperta, Helix adanensis and many others. However, all of them are difficult to mine, some are generally exotic. And since a rare buyer in Russia understands the types of snails, demand may not appear. However, if the opportunity arises, farmers also breed rare species.
Time
The snail is a leisurely creature, and this is manifested in everything. She not only moves without haste, but also grows up extremely slowly. That is why its conversion into an edible individual will have to wait. Patience will be especially needed when observing how snails breed. Egg laying can be delayed for up to a year or more, if the conditions of detention cause the snail any suspicions and insecurity about tomorrow. After fertilization, she will safely carry biomaterial inside herself for an arbitrarily long time.
In the best case, if everything goes according to plan, you need to wait six months until the offspring. At worst, up to three years. Artificial content slightly accelerates this process: the snail acquires edibility in a year and a half. Breeding snail grapes in natural conditions will probably require all three years. That is why wise farmers buy immediately mature, adults, and almost immediately get offspring. Snails are hermaphrodites, and therefore all individuals lay eggs until a single one, and this is the most interesting in how snails reproduce.
Purchase
A grape snail produces approximately sixty eggs a year. Achatina in this respect are more profitable - they have a clutch of up to one hundred and sixty eggs. If a farmer has decided to plant grapevines, then he needs at least eight hundred pieces. To date, about fifty rubles per individual, sexually mature are more expensive. However, it is better to buy the whole batch in bulk - a whole uterine tribe. Akhatinov to start a business is enough only two hundred pieces.
A grape snail weighs about fifty grams, and Achatina weighs all seventy, so it is better to take snails not individually, but by weight. Professional breeders do just that, but amateurs usually sell in small batches and individually. Many give snails for nothing, because they have grown too much in the aquarium, but such a purchase has little promise: it takes a lot of time for growth, and snail food is not free.
Collection
Shellfish can be collected in the garden, spending one or two months on it. The garden, of course, should be very large, and even better - a vineyard. Extraordinary patience will be required here, since eight hundred grape snails are needed to start a business, but they do not live next to each other. They are also hiding! You have to walk and crawl, bend over and jump, which, in principle, is good for your health, but extremely tiring.
And, of course, you cannot find Achatina in the wild and in any garden in Russia - not a single specimen. Therefore, it is better to spend a little time looking for wholesale, find a good supplier, buy adult selected snails, and then it remains only to watch their mating games. It is unlikely that a purchase will require more than ten thousand rubles, but the trouble of collecting can be avoided. As a result, time is saved, which is also money.
Pests
Breeding snails in the apartment and the natural environment is very different.Farmers usually allocate a separate, completely fenced area (otherwise the inhabitants slowly, but irrevocably creep in different directions). Fifty square meters is enough. Equipped with this site as an ordinary kindergarten. In addition to the danger of snails crawling in case of insufficient isolation of their habitat, there are many others.
In the natural environment, there are a lot of inhabitants who are not averse to eating snails. First of all, these are birds. Scarecrow is unlikely to completely protect this business, but the canopy will definitely help, you can just tarp. Birds are afraid of everything that looks like human housing. Many species of large beetles also feed on snails. If you fight them with pesticides, you can poison the snails, so beetles are perhaps the most serious enemy on the way to becoming a business.
Animals
If the fencing is performed efficiently, there will be no main natural enemy on the site. This is a hedgehog. However, moles appear from under the ground, which also consider snails a treat. It is impossible to cover the ground with anything, since the snails themselves need soil, and the moles will have to fight in some other way, of which, in principle, there are many.
The fence at the top should be rounded inward so that lovers of verticals - snails - never get out of freedom. Some farmers instead use a more efficient method - they bring a weak electric current (no more than ten volts, otherwise the snail will have to be eaten immediately, it will be completely cooked). Mollusks crawl to the top of the fence, receive a small discharge and fall back.
Conditions
Fresh air is suitable only for grape snails, since Achatina cannot withstand temperatures below 3-4 degrees Celsius, they are not trained in nature by nature, and therefore they simply die. Grape snails, on the other hand, tolerate the cold completely.
True, three months of hibernation is a loss for a businessman, since snails sleep buried in the ground and do not breed. But in warm time, everything is fine with them. But we must remember that to allocate them a plot and protect them from pests - this is not all. They definitely need plants on the site, the special composition of the soil, regularly updated and dug up.
How to feed snails?
You should not hope for a fruit crop from this section, because a snail with an appetite eats literally everything. Let the weeds grow there, the mollusks eat them with pleasure, and the best thing is to plant wild grapes, it is unpretentious and is the best food for snails. What else to feed snails? Fertilizing the soil, weed is thrown into the aviary, just mowed, not forgetting about mineral fertilizers - without calcium, shell formation does not occur. It is imperative to moisten the area and not allow direct sunlight (again - a canvas canopy to help).
In the apartment
Of course, in an apartment, mollusks grow almost twice as fast, and they don’t sleep in winter. Achatina will generally feel at home in Africa. However, the cultivation of snails in an apartment at the initial stage will cost much more. Firstly, you need a fairly spacious room, at least twenty square meters, where the molluscs will be located (terrariums are used, but with independently made filling).
Here you can create the conditions for breeding of any species of snails, even African. The ambient temperature should not be lower than twenty-three degrees Celsius, humidity should also be kept at a high level. The soil must be saturated with calcium and mud (its mollusks eagerly eat, because it contains the nutrients necessary for their organisms). Food is necessarily of plant origin - again leaves and weeds. Two or three times a week in the molluskaria cleaning is done with a detailed digging of the soil, otherwise the snails will die, suffocating in a rotting environment.
Caviar
Home breeding is good because it is much easier to get valuable snail caviar. Entrepreneurs usually take one out of ten mollusks under mating games to get unhindered masonry that snails dig into the soil and not disturb the rest of the inhabitants. Harvesting caviar is a time-consuming process, but sometimes it gives more money than shellfish sold to restaurants.
By the way, you can sell snails not only to restaurants. They are willingly bought by pharmaceutical companies, and any, even small and complete illiquid. Gastropods are used in the manufacture of the drug Helicidin - the basis for cough medicine. Also, some chemical industries are interested in such a purchase - they need mollusks to extract from them lectins used in industry. If you are lucky to get such orders, the farmer (entrepreneur) will receive a guaranteed income (and even somewhat more substantial than when working with restaurants).