Bitter Truth About Snail Farming

Snail Farming In Africa

Snail farming is the rearing of snails for consumption

In Africa, we predominantly have the Giant African Land Snails - Achatina Marginata (AM), AA (Achatina Achatina) and AF (Achatina Fulica)

Snail meat is very valuable because it has a high protein content and relatively low fat (cholesterol). This is in addition to being an excellent source of iron, calcium, vitamin A and Omega -3 (which helps in protecting the heart from jamb runs 2023 attack) etc.

It's no surprise Doctors recommend it a lot to patients struggling with High BP, Heart problems, Stroke etc

The bottom line is that snail meat is very expensive (go to any joint/restaurant and order one - you'll see for yourself) and snail farming is profitable

HOWEVER, this doesn't mean it's a get rich quick business opportunity like many snail farming entrepreneurs would like you to believe

Let me explain

I'm sure you've seen a lot of posts on Facebook emphasising how prolific snails are (e.g. AF is capable of laying about 200 eggs in a year) and how expensive the meat is (one adult snail can go for N350 - N500).

They will then proceed to do a quick math for you, letting you know that should you start with 1000 snails, by the end of the year you'll have about 500,000 snails. Selling these 500,000 snails will fetch you no less than N50 million

They will conveniently leave out information that'll help you put things in perspective.

Well, like I said, Snail Farming is indeed very profitable. But you need to know the below:

1. Snails are highly prolific creatures, but they also have high mortality rates. It's not uncommon to see mortality of about 20% even if you're doing everything right

2. Snails don't do well when they are crowded out in a confined space. There is an ideal stocking density for each size of snail (ranging from hatchlings, breeders and adult snails). If you violate this stocking density out of greed, mortality rate will increase, cannibalism will increase, growth rate will slow down leading to smaller size adults, egg laying will reduce etc

3. Snails do better in a Greenhouse than in a Pen House because the Greenhouse replicates their habitat in the wild. They are vegetarians and they love exploring..the greenhouse gives them the vegetables they need and the space to move around and explore - attributes the pen house lack

4. If you start small without adequate space to expand, in no distant time you'll begin to struggle as the snails multiply exponentially. Scaling up is expensive because you'll need to construct more Greenhouse/Penhouse etc and a lot more!

This information will help you to make an informed decision before investing your hard-earned money into this business

If you'll like to know more about snail farming - feel free to follow me on YouTube

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