How to care for baby snail

Snail is one of the most popular and prefared meat in the whole world, this is because of it’s delicious taste, and it is used to prepare many types of delicious foods. But upon the huge importance or usefulness of snail, people tends to ignore it’s production and many tends to depend more on picking them in the forest. This is the main reason why I decided to write this post, to teach people how to take care of baby snails.

To take care of baby snails, build house for them, feed and provide water for them, provide medication to them.

We all know that there are two types of snail, land snail and mystery or water snail, in this article, I am going to cover about the both of them, but first, we start with the most popular one which every body eat, the land snail.

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Constructing a house for land baby Snail

In order to take care of the land baby snail, you must construct a good house for them, in which they will be raised into full grown up snails.

So housing is the first and one of the most important care to give to a baby snail/snails, so it must be made available and on a good atmosphere as land baby snails can not stay or survive in a warm environment, but maybe they might if they grow up.

So a good and cool environment should be located and the environment should not have wind, as it will dehydrate the baby snails, but there must be good amount of cool air/ breeze, so my best recommended place to build house for land baby snails in order to care for them is under a thick tree that has only tiny amount of sunlight penetration.

To build the land baby snail house, you need to get a big square glass or a big ice cream box or even a big cloth box.

Don’t use plank, it it will rot and the snails will escape, I know you don’t want that to happen!.

decorate any of the recommended boxes you choose with small amount of loamy soil on the bottom of the box and get green leaves and place on the bottom too, adding with their small branches, this is where the baby snails will climb on.

Make sure there are numerous number of small openings all around the box, where air will penetrate.
The openings should be more tiny than the baby snails, if not, they will escape.

Cover the top of the box and make some openings on the box cover too.

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To me, glass box is more preferable, so that you will be seeing them from the outside without opening the box every time.

Feeding land baby snails

After the construction of their house and getting them into it, the next care to give them is to be feeding them on a regular basis.

Baby land snail is very simple to feed, they do not require any special feed or diet, but they solely depends on kitchen scraps and green leaves.

To feed them, get them kitchen scraps or wasted foods and green leaves like yam peel, tomato, Plantain peel, fluted pumpkin leaves, fluted pumpkin seed, garri, yam leaf, and any farm leaf you could think of etc.

Take these things to them and place it inside their house, they will start eating on it little by little untill they finish the it.

Baby snail eats slowly and steady, so make sure there is no point in time when they will lack food because they use the foods to build their shell and grow.

It is good to give them more of foods that contains good amount of iron and calcium which will help them to grow their shell faster and stronger.

Giving water to land baby snails

Apart from food and shelter, water is a another great way to give care to land baby snails, this is because snails, both the infant and the grown up are all heavy drinkers, so water should be provided to them.

To provide them water, pour some water on a small container and keep it in their house, they will from time to time go to the water and drink.

Just like food, water is very important and so they should not be allowed to lack it at any point in time, even when they have fully grown.

The type of water to be given to them should not be a pipe born water! this is because pipe born water contains chlorine which is not good for snails although it does nothing to human beings, but it does to snails, and so they should be given bottled water, spring water or even rain water.

Apart from giving them water in a small container, water should be sprayed into their house from time to time, which will help to soften what ever food that is given to them and also cool the temperature of their house and dampen the sand in their house, this is due to the fact that snails love cool and damp place, that’s why they normally come out when ever there is rain fall, and failure to do this always might lead to them going back in to their shell and hibernating.

Medical care for land baby snails

Snails just like any other living things do get sick at some point in time, so this requires proper care by giving them medicinal leaves from time to time for them to stay healthy and grow rapidly.
Some medicinal leave to give them are:

Moringa: Moringa is known for it’s various medicinal properties and also for it’s richness in protein. A Fresh moringa leaf has as much protein as an egg.
Dry moringa leaf has or contains five times more of it than the fresh one.

They are dried under the sun and be grinded into a powdered form to be mixed with the activated solution of Effective Microorganisms (EMAS), molasses, probiotic ferment 10 and acidophilus.
The role of the EMAS is to multiply the good bacteria and facilitate a good decomposition of the mixture; the molasses helps feed the good bacteria while the probiotic 10 and the acidophilus reduce the action of the bad bacteria. The mixture obtained is left at room temperature (27 – 28 ° C) for two weeks.

This is given to the snails which is a good medicine for them.

Utazi leaf: Utazi is another great Medicine for snails, including the baby snails.
It contains some nutrients which when give to the baby snails will help them in many ways to build up and grow faster.

Pests/ Precautions for caring for land baby snails

Snail is one of the animals that are very prone to pests, although they have shells, but in so many cases, their shells don’t protect them from pests and the baby snails are always the victim of pests due to the fact that their shell is not strong enough to protect them from some of the pests.

To take care of baby snails, you need to protect them from pests such as fowl, Squirrel, Rat, giant rat, porcupine, pig, soldier ant etc.

Such animals have the potential to break their fragile shell and cannibalize on them, so to protect them, that is why it is very important to construct a house for them and cover it so that non of these pests will penetrate.

For soldier ant, the foods given to the snails may attract them, that is why it is best to use a glass box for the snails house, no ant will climb on the smooth and slippery glass, so the snails are more safe with glass box as their home.

Apart from pests, you should not act as a pest yourself, that is why you should take some precautions while caring for the land baby snails.

Don’t dare take them with your hands, this is very important because you might end up breaking their fragile shell when you pick them up, to move them, ( this is necessary when you want to change their sand, clean their box or remove rotten foods from their box) allow them to climb on top of the sticks you put in their box, then move the sticks. When you are done with what ever you are doing, put them back into their box with the same process.

During the rainy season, place the box in a place where the rain will fall on it and penetrate the inside of the it, this will also help the baby snails in terms of cooling their temperature, and making them lively because they love it.

Mystery or water snail is a type of snail that lives in the water, it is mainly found in the river, streams and even seas, this type of snail is not far different from the land snail and to take care of them, they requires almost the same care given to the land snail, but the only difference is that they live on water and do not eat what land snail eat.

Construction of house for baby water snail

The first care to give to baby water snails is to construct a house for them, just like the land baby snail, but in the case of the baby water snail, their method of house construction is far different, here is how to do it.

get an ice cream box or a big square glass box, fill it with water, don’t fill all the box, half is okay. pour some sand into it and take the snails to their box.

Again the water should no be a pipe born water, rain water, stream water or even spring water is okay, if you want to use pipe born water, first of all pour it in a bucket, place it under the sun for few days so that the chlorine in it will evaporate and dissolve.

There must be some openings around the top of the box in order to allow air to penetrate inside the box.

Again the box should be kept in a cool place, this is to preserve the cool temperature of the water, keeping in a warm or hot temperature or under the sun will heat the water, thereby killing the baby water snails in it.

Feeding of baby water snails

Feeding of their type of snail is very yard and complicated compared to the land snail that could eat any thing.

This type of snail is fed with fish feed. Any type of fish feed, wether floating feed is okay for them and it will make them grow much more faster compared to land baby snail.

Just like the land snail type, this water snail tends to ear alot too at infant, no wonder it grows fast, so they should not be allowed to lack food at any point in time.

Water should not be an issue because they are already living in the water, what is required is to change their water once it becomes too dirty and unsafe for them, leaving dirty water for long might breed diseases which might kill them.

To remove their water, pick them up with hand and transfer them to another container and place them back once you are through with it.
The baby water snail has more thicker shell compared to baby land snail, so it is almost impossible to break their shell only by holding them.

Water snail has some pests such as fish, so to take care of them properly, don’t try and mix them with fish in the same box, or the fish will eat the baby water snails.

Like I said earlier above, don’t fill up the box totally, as the snails need to be going out of the water from time to time, so the unfilled area of the box is where they will be surfacing and climbing.

Conclusion

I hope you have learned enough on how to take care of both baby land snails and baby water snails, if you did enjoy reading this content, please share it on the social media.

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