For those of you unfamiliar with Giant African Land Snails this page gives a rough introduction to the species, along with a basic guide to food, care, breeding, housing and handling. If you are interested in keeping Giant African Land Snails but don't know where to get them, or if you just have a query, please get in touch with 'Snaily Mail' and I, or someone else, may be able to help you.
Giant African Land Snails
Giant African Land Snails - the name says it all, really. They are land snails and they live wild in Africa, although in this country they are only kept in captivity. And they are giant. The largest Giant African Land Snail ever found was 37.5 cm long in shell length and wieghed nearly 2 kilograms! However, this was captured from the wild and mot pet snails only grow to about 15-20 cm in shell length.
Food
Giant African Land Snails eat pretty much what your average garden snail eats; lettuce, cucumber, courgette, potato, apple, banana, tomato, beans, carrot and pear although you should not feed them just any old leaves from the garden and should wash all their food before giving it to them, to aviod poisoning.
Breeding
Giant African Land Snails breed quite often, and lay about 200 eggs at a time. If you want these to hatch, you will need to keep them somewhere warm and moist for about two weeks. They may not hatch, and if they dry out or get too hot or too cold they will die, but you can always try again next time. If you do try breeding, it is a good idea not to keep all the eggs unless you already have good homes for the babies because 150 baby snails (you will never get a full batch to hatch) are a lot of babies and THEY CANNOT BE RELEASED INTO THE WILD. In America some snails were released, they survied and bred and now they are a pest and it is illeagal to keep them as pets. If you don't want babies, all you need to do is freeze they eggs for 24 hours or more and then throw them away.
Care
Giant African Land Snails are very easy to care for. They need only to be fed when their food runs out or, of course, goes of, wilts etc. Unfortunately they often eat everything in their tank overnight but they only need to be cleaned out once evrey week or two. Giant African Land Snails rarley get ill and extra cuttlefish is all that is needed to repair minor shell damage. A thourogh clean-out will get rid of most mites etc. You also need to keep the tank moist by spraying or watering it daily.
This snail is eating a loose bit of shell so that it can use the extra calcium gained to mend the crack in its shell.
Housing
A plain plastic or glass tank is all that is needed to house a Giant African Land Snail and a plain fish tank is perfectly adequate, provided it does not have a hole in the top, of course. Sizes range from about 30cm x 20cm x 20cm to massive 150cm x 60cm x 60cm. All you have to do is put 2-5cm of plain compost (available from garden centres and not, of course, the type labelled "effective controll of slugs and snails" or anything simaler!) on the bottom of the tank. Neither heating nor lighting is necessary but a light does add a nice touch for decoration purposes. You could also buy some plastic plants etc., available for fish. Or, if you're gooing for the cheap option, just find some nice pebbles or small rocks, rise them, and arrange them in your tank.
Handling
Giant African Land Snails love to be handled. Just wash your hands before and after and be sure not to pull the shell too hard (I learnt that the hard way with a garden snail, horror story for another time...) unless they are very young the snails will not bite and seeing as their 'teeth' are not actually sharp this dose not hurt anyhow.