The Snail Trail

Home of the UK bred Giant African Land Snail

Welcome to The Snail Trail - The home of the U.K. bred Giant African Land Snail.

The purpose of this site is to introduce you to the world of keeping Giant African Land Snails as pets, these incredible invertebrates are a fantastic pet, easy to keep, simple to care for and great fun for children and schools.

Children can learn all about snails, its origins, its life cycle and growth, how to feed and care for it, overall they are a fascinating learning tool, these snails are very similar to your common garden snail with one real exception, size, as their name suggests these creatures are giants, with shell sizes measuring anything between 8 - 30 centimetres long, they are truly giants, holding one of these is like being shrunk down in size and facing a enormous, slimy snail!

I first became interested in them last summer when I eventually got fed up with my children running in from the garden with garden snails stuck all over them, asking to keep them as pets, I remembered talking to one of the parents at the children’s schools, who said she bred them, so a couple of hours later we welcomed "Gary" and "Spongebob" 2 Achatina Fulica adult Giant African Land Snails into our home.

Giant African Land Snails are fast becoming one of the U.K's top exotic pets, with playgrounds around the country buzzing with a new phrase "Giant African Land Snail", or to the un-initiated GALS.

As the name suggest, these animals are originally from Africa (with different species populating different regions of the continent) where they are mostly considered a pest, but in some areas are a vital source of income, their meat is eaten as protein rich supplement to diet and their shells used as tool/utensils however over time these snails have either purposely or accidentally been spread to most parts of the world, either as pets or food, or hidden among shipments bound for all parts of the world.

The spread of these snails has been so prolific that some parts of the world have banned the importation of them (in particular the USA). Large numbers of these ever vegetable munching molluscs can cause significant damage to crops, however saying that here in the UK they are not on any banned pet lists and are freely available to keep as an exotic pet.

This is probably due to our climate, should any of these snails be released into our wild, the likelihood of them surviving our cold weather is very slim.

Over the next few pages, you will be able to find out all you need to know to keep your own giant African land snails, all the information contained within these pages is from my own personal experiences, I do not claim to be an expert, there are people far more qualified than I, however my snails are thriving, breeding and well loved pets of our family home.