To run alongside The Snail Trail's Snail Rescue section of this website, The Snail Trail have decided in 2007 to raise awareness of the growing problem of unwanted baby snail births.
There are currently hundreds more baby snails in the UK than there are available homes for them, with snails often being dumped into the wild, or passed off on to unscrupulous pet shops that have no real idea on how to keep these animals, with them often being kept in tanks that are too small for them, under nourished and generally in poor conditions.
If you look back at the section http://www.thesnailtrail.co.uk/breedingyoursnail.htm of this website you will find out just how easy it is for your pet snails to breed, this section does cover how best to deal with unwanted snail eggs, but we thought it important to highlight it once more here.
We have created a simple checklist to aid you in the hope that you do not realise one day that your two snails sat happily in their tank, suddenly become 200 snails, we have made this in the style of a poster that you can download from the downloads section of the website, we actively encourage you to download it and pass it on to anyone you know who has pet snails, you could even take a copy along to your local pet shop that sells GALS. Please feel free to distribute it to whomever you wish.
Egg Blog
To demonstrate how easy it is to become the unknowing owner of a couple of hundred baby snails without even knowing, I have decided to hatch a batch of snails and show you all how quickly this can happen.
(I hasten to add that all the baby snails that hatch from this batch will be properly cared for and homed responsibly, in line with my normal breeding program)
Timeline......January 28th 2007 10:00pm Achatina Fulica Tank containing Gary and Spongebob 2 adult Achatina Fulica Snails.
Timeline....... January 29th 2007 08:00am following a check of the tank a fresh clutch of eggs are discovered (normally, at this point I would remove them and freeze them ready for disposal).
The eggs are white in colour and measure approximately 3mm across, there is an estimated 100 or so eggs in the clutch.
Timeline ....... February 3rd 2007 19:24 - No significant change to the status of the eggs, temperature in the tank remains at a constant 26 degrees celsius with a humidity of 80%
Timeline ....... February 12th 2007 11:13 - The eggs have started to hatch, and the snails within start to eat the remainder of the shell, In just under 2 weeks there is now a large clutch of baby snails living under the surface of the substrate, they will in the next few days start to make their way to the surface.
Timeline ...... February 19th 2007 11:11 - The snails have now formed and are moving around the tank, they currently measure approximately 4mm across, having just done a head count I can confirm that there are 155 viable snails. Here you can see four of them on a one pence piece. These snails are hard to spot in the tank at the moment, with many of them hiding out in the Sphagnum Moss, and only a few venturing out during the evening.
They have now been moved from the main Achatina Fulica Tank to a nursery tank, where they will be observed, kept warm and moist and fed regularly.