Snails are extremely prolific animals, and unless you’re about to buy a pair of a species that’s still almost impossible to find in the hobby, you’ll soon find yourself overrun with baby snails.
Before examining how to breed gastropods and how to raise their young, we need to touch on the topic of selection.
Selection is a fundamental practice in breeding various animals, from reptiles to mammals and, finally, to invertebrates. In nature, genetic selection occurs automatically: weak and malformed individuals are unable to find food or successfully defend themselves against predators and die, thus failing to pass on their “imperfect” genes.
In captivity, this does not happen because we humans will feed every single specimen, which—thanks to this constant care and the total absence of danger or predators—could survive and reproduce.
However, this must not happen. If malformed animals begin to reproduce—those with deformed or soft shells, smaller than average, that may struggle to move or eat, or that have any genetically transmissible defect—the species will deteriorate over time because more and more individuals with problems will be born, until they are all like that and the species is driven to extinction.
If a non-reproductive animal is born in a reptile or mammal breeding facility, there is no problem, since the probability of this happening is usually quite low, and the young animal can be kept as a pet without ever breeding it. With gastropods, however, the situation is drastically different.
On average, an adult Lissachatina fulica lays one hundred eggs per month for two or three years following a single mating. Of those one hundred eggs, eighty hatch; of those eighty hatchlings, at least thirty usually die due to natural selection, leaving about fifty young snails that gradually grow to the size of their parents. And these young snails are full of imperfections!
On average, out of a clutch of one hundred eggs, only six or seven snails will be capable of reproducing. All the others—due to deformities, abnormal growth, or small size—are classified as “runts,” or non-reproductive specimens. Finding space at home to keep forty-six snails per clutch (i.e., every month) as pets is impossible. In most cases, it’s also impossible to put them up for adoption because, when dealing with animals that are so easy to breed, people overlook ethical considerations and decide to let them mate anyway, even after being warned not to.
So, unfortunately, the only alternative is euthanasia. If you want to breed gastropods, you must be prepared to euthanize about fifty snails every month.
As very primitive invertebrates, snails have no consciousness and feel no emotions. Over the years, an ethical method of euthanasia has been developed in which the animal simply falls asleep and never wakes up again; this involves placing the snails in a freezer for a few hours.
If you’re not ready to do this because you don’t have the stomach for it, I understand—that’s why I stopped breeding gastropods. But don’t start doing it if you’re then going to end up giving away the young ones, risking the permanent ruin of the species.
If you’re still interested in breeding gastropods, let’s move on to the theoretical part.
Snails are incomplete hermaphrodites that store sperm. There are no males or females; two individuals are simply needed for fertilization to occur. Sperm exchange occurs through an unusual mating ritual in which one of the two snails inserts its sexual organ (called the “love dart”) behind the other’s head, and a single mating is sufficient to fertilize the clutches of both snails for a couple of years.
A few weeks after mating, the animals will begin laying eggs. The eggs should be collected and placed in a small box to be left to incubate directly in the adults’ enclosure. Egg hatching times, as well as the intervals between egg-laying and the age of sexual maturity, vary from species to species.
Once hatched, the young should be transferred to a small box with the same housing conditions as the adults. They should be fed daily and given an adequate calcium supplement, which is essential for proper development. Growth is inhibited by cramped spaces and overcrowding, so it is advisable to thin out the group and move them to progressively larger enclosures to ensure successful growth.
The minimum age for selling a snail in perfect condition and of a size appropriate for the species is three months, because before that there is a risk of accidental death due to natural selection; however, the longer you wait, the more carefully you can select which snails to breed and which to cull.
I recommend paying close attention to the age of sexual maturity: siblings should be separated before they reach maturity and housed alone until they are sold to avoid inbreeding, which would only produce runt offspring.