Cost of Rearing 100 Snails within Six (6) Months

Today we are going to be discussing about how much it will cost you as a snail farmer or an intending snail farmer to breed 100 snails within six (6) using Nigeria as a case study but first let us describe what snail farming otherwise known as snail rearing business is all about inorder to carry you along below

Snail farming business also known as Heliciculture or Heliculture or snail rearing is the process of raising edible land snails, primarily for human consumption or cosmetic use. The meat and snail eggs can be consumed as escargot and as a type of caviar respectively.

Snails also produce Mucus which is commonly known as snail slime and the mucus has medical properties and is used in cosmetics. Snails are Hermaphrodites meaning that a particular snail can act as a male as well as also act as a female.

Snail farming or snail rearing can either be reared as subsistence snail farming level or for commercial snail farming business level where you raise snails in large quantity and sell them to others for consumption or other purposes.

Meanwhile, Snail farming for beginners is very easy as snail farming does not require much knowledge to understand. As a beginner in snail farming business, all you need to do is carry an expert along on undergo a training in an already well established snail farm to acquire more practical knowledge about snail farming to guide and assist you establish and run a successful snail farm.

Snails are also cold-blooded animal and therefore their feeding activities are bound to be influenced by their environment, time and season. In preparing food for snails (snail food or snail feeding), the temperature inside the pen is hugely important, ensure that the snails are comfortable.

Snails are a huge part of the diet in many parts of Africa, although they are not always affordable and available all year round. Their high protein, low fat and cholesterol content make them a nutritional favourite.

Snails contain almost all the amino acids needed by the body and most of its by-products are used for cosmetics and medicines.

As our population becomes more interested in healthier living and low-cholesterol diets, snails will become a popular alternative to to all the fatty and non-healthy meats that flood our markets nowadays. They are much cheaper than red meat with greater health benefits on top!

Snails have, for a long time, been a popular and recurring item on the menus of hotels, restaurants and bars where they often feature as boiled, fried and spiced kebabs. They are also a great addition to soups and stews which are a significant part of most African dishes.

Cost of Rearing 100 Snails within Six (6) Months

Now going back to our main topic of the day, below is how much it will cost you as a snail farmer or an intending snail farmer to breed 100 snails within six (6) using Nigeria as a case study.

STAGE 1: Total cost for the pen construction #35,000

STAGE 2: Cost of your labor 

STAGE 3: Cost of buying breeder snails called point of lay @ N400 each (100 Pieces) #40,000.

STAGE 4: Transportation of 100snails to Owner

STAGE 5: Cost feeding using special snail formulated feed #12,000 per 25kg bag. It Feeds the 100 snails for 3 months. 2 bags needed before harvest of snails for sale.

STAGE 6: Cost for buying fruits like pawpaw, watermelon for 6 months period for #1000) But you can get them free from fruit vendors or plant them

TOTAL= N85,000

At harvest if you bought 100 snails when each snail is expected to lay eggs at least twice in 6 months and each snail can lay 100 eggs at a time. You multiply 10 by 300 that is 1,000 eggs in total you are likely to get. You can then sell off the parent stock and start breeding the baby snails to maturity.

If you sell each parent snail fully matured at #300 you will make a sale of N30,000 for the one hundred parent stock. Which you still have about 10,000 grower snails to grow to maturity.

Please consider mortality of say 20% hence you will have 8000 young snails.

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