HELICICULTURE= Farming Snails

Heliciculture-Farming Snails. I not sure if this in viable in my area Pennsylvania, USA zone 6 but it sure is interesting. Anyone practicing Heliciculture







http://afsic.nal.usda.gov/grazing-systems-and-alternative-livestock-breeds/raising-alternative-livestock-breeds/snails

We have tons of the culinary snails around here, I've never captured them and fed them corn and such to make them good, mostly because our ducks LOVE eating them, and in turn I eat the ducks.

I luv eating snails ( escargot). I have read snails must be purged of intestinal grit before eating them.

We are overrun with snails and slugs in my area, I can imagine actually trying to encourage them...

This is also something I'm interested in, though I'm having the toughest time finding a supplier.

Does anyone know where I could source some helix pomatia?

http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/resmgmt/publist/700Series/770.000-1.pdf

For those in BC, Canada

I have considered doing this and seeing your topic here made me even more curious. We have literally thousands here and we live in a rural, organic area so presumably they would be okay to eat.

Heliculture is not allowd here in Fl, i checked into it. Still snails can be found purged and fattened easily for a home hobby.

"We are overrun with snails and slugs in my area, I can imagine actually trying to encourage them.."

I am not an expert but "the problem is the solution" is like permaculture 101. Maybe encouraging them is exactly what you should be doing if they are thriving without management already you could do well. I have been looking into this myself although more of an idle curiosity because I cannot farm at the moment. That was a good article because I have not yet heard that they may be banned in certain areas. It would be such a nightmare to be "that guy" who unleashed some mutant giant snail upon the midwest for example.
I will definitely be digging deeper into this in the future. Maybe it could be a keystone kind of project for someone clever to make a name for themselves, what are the possibilities of snail breeding and hybrids, startup costs for netting ect, what is the local market, how can they be integrated into other agricultural systems?
In fact, and maybe this is fodder for another topic, but it seems to me I have not seen much info about mollusca cultivation in general. I know there is a guy in Tennessee growing the only freshwater pearls in the US. I found that so intriguing. I believe you do harvest the meat in the process so it is a bit of a food/ag crop. But it can be done and I would wonder what others have to say about it. If I could get a little gemstone inside every potato or carrot I grew, I think that would be an idea worth exploring. Anyone know about mollusc farming?

I have just been following this a little more deeply here. I did find a link to PennSnailFarm, but the hyperlink did not bring me to a website. The USDA has a good section of links in their alternative agriculture area online. Have not found anything on sericulture there though. African snails are banned here in the midwest.

All interested in breeding snails, as well as those already breeding I invite you to the newly created, international forum https://snailsfarming.club. Tips, help, contacts, opinions about snail farming.

I find the thought of eating invertebrates nauseating,  but I realize that is a personal shortcoming.
Snails are not quite as bad as slugs,  and slugs are not as horrific as starfish.
Earthworms otoh are wholesome and really cool,  but not for eating.
This is the nature of my insanity...

I imagine snails would make excellent chicken feed,  so I am interested in raising the nightmares.
Without  me having to comb through information that makes my skin crawl,  I'm curious if snails can be fattened on a waste stream,  food or otherwise,  or do they need something more refined?
If they could thrive on algae, a tank of snails and algae and snails could be a food source for chooks.

Back to nightmare fuel,  presumably these snails could escape.
Even snails that are strictly aquatic could spread by eggs if kept in an open tank.
I'm going go check the weed torch, to ease my troubled mind...

Ichabod Shorthouse wrote:Heliculture is not allowed here in Fl, i checked into it. Still snails can be found, purged, and fattened easily for a home hobby.

The reason for this is that pest snails, such as the African giant snail, have been brought into too many places as part of misguided heliciculture schemes. In any such project, it is important to understand whether you will be able to find a market for the product. African giant snail schemes have tended to be promoted in places where there is either no tradition of eating snails, or a cultural preference for other species of snails such as the escargot. When the would-be heliciculturist belatedly discovers there is no money to be made, sometimes they just release or abandon the snails, instead of taking care to destroy them.

William Bronson wrote:
I imagine snails would make excellent chicken feed,  so I am interested in raising the nightmares.
Without  me having to comb through information that makes my skin crawl,  I'm curious if snails can be fattened on a waste stream,  food or otherwise,  or do they need something more refined?
If they could thrive on algae, a tank of snails and algae and snails could be a food source for chooks. .

Its entirely possible my chickens are finky, although they happily chow down stink bugs.  I have different breeds of chickens and only one of the breeds (red star) would eat snails.  The others (brahma, isa browns, americana, RI red, black star and my home hybrids) all turns their beaks up and ignore them.  Maybe you can find a test snail or two?

My own chickens don't eat much in the way of live snails. But they greedily chow down cooked ones.

I'm actually considering trying to raise snails and leopard slugs for chicken food. Looking in my farm's boneyard, I think I have enough materials to cobble together 2-3 heliciculture pens. And have have enough wastage from the garden to use for feeding them. It would be a very cheap added source of protein for my chickens.

Wow, cooking snails for the chickens never remotely crossed my mind.  Interesting idea. Also sounds like a perfect suggestion to give the nephews...another in a growing list my sister is hating me for😝

Thanks for the idea Su Ba.  Looks like I will be the one looking for test snails!

<<<another in a growing list my sister is hating me for😝 >>>

Hahahahahaha! Decades ago when our close friends' children were young, we often gave the kids Christmas presents that their parents wouldn't......glitter, stickum reinforcements, rubber cement, scotch tape, staplers, whistles, confetti, the sort of things that parents hate. It was evil fun, to be sure.