Is the act of rearing and managing snail production in a farm for the purpose of producing snail in large quantity for meat and money or financial gain. This serve as means of employment to people, and source of vitamins. Doctors do recommend snail meat for purposes of enriching blood level in human beings. We shall discus types of snail in our next lecture.
In some areas in Igbo land, snail is forbidden, because it is being ascribed to a god of their ancestor. One of such towns for instance is Ohakpu in Oru Local Government of Imo state Nigeria.
Snail Farming is very lucrative, and many people are waking up to this business of snail farming. Apart from the fact that snail farming is easy to manage, snail farming does not require much technicalities or capital as snails can easily be picked around for the take-off. Snail farm is easy to setup- with little structure and little fund of about N25,000 (twenty five thousand naira).
Hotels, Restaurants and other eateries are people that will constantly demand your supply. You could get standing orders from these group of people for the supply of snails to them at agreed times and rates and you know what that means? Constant money into your pocket.
The giant West Africa snail called Elephant snail is the most desirable specie for snail farming due to it's high yielding capacity. There are other good species but I will focus on Elephant snail in this blog post because, it's easy to maintain in Nigeria.
Elephant snail is very good for commercialization as well, because of its profitability. This is because of the volume of eggs it lays at once. Each Elephant snail lays 350 to 500 eggs at a time in clutches, three times a year. Therefore, if you start a farm with about 1000 snails, in one year you would be getting about 2,000,000 (two million) snails in a year
Having decided on the specie, let's take you through the step by step how to setup your snail farm in a small scale level and starts rearing your snail towards harvest.