giant african land snailys.... read about all 142 of ours... (Giant African Land Snails)

Member Name: nanomeyb

Product:	Giant African Land Snails
Date:	14/10/08 (947 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: intresting pets the kids love! easy to care for

Disadvantages: breed lots and lots..... and lots

giant african land snails make great pets! they are intresting and so easy to look after...

when i was younger me and my brothers and sisters always nagged my mother for some after a family friends had some but she always said no... we had snakes, lizards, cats, gerbils, guinea pig and rabbit - but snails were a no go... i never quite understood that and decided that when i was old enough too choose what pets i kept, i would get some, for old times sake!

well we currently have 142.... yes you read that right... what happened was we got 4 from freecycle, one large one, one slighly smaller and two babies.

my 4 year old quickly names them upsy and daisy, makka and pakka....yes we love in the night garden on cebeebies!

a week later the large one laid eggs...
i had read all about this before hand you can control this by putting the eggs in a bag in the freezer for two days before putting them in the bin...
but my other half, being a typical man thought it was only fair the poor 'chap' (technically not true they are a bit of both) should at least get the chance to... have some babies and so we decided that we would incubate and hatch the eggs and see if they hatched...

well 3 weeks later they did, all 169 of them.... it was really cool to watch, they attually eat their way out!
since then i have found homes for about 30 of them and still working on it, they are growing rapidly!

the basic care of giant african land snails...
you need a tank - with a lid and holes in, soil - not from the garden, preferably compost with peat and NO pestisides, cuttlefish should be avaliable at all times as essential for their shells and they need to be sprayed daily and given plenty of fruit and veg firm favourites being lettuce and of course cucumber.
they like to be kept warm and most and if they get too cold they will hibernate and apparenty rarely come out of it.

my girls just love holding and watching them, far more intresting then looking at garden snails and having to release them!

Summary: make great pets just use the birth control options!!