Key Points and Methods of African Giant Snail Farming Technology
When it comes to snails, I think the first thing everyone thinks of is slowness. We often use snails as a metaphor for someone who is very slow whether working or walking, so as a snail, it really gets caught in the crossfire while just lying there. Many people do not know much about snails.
African Giant Snail Farming
The African giant snail (scientific name: Achatina Fulica) is a medium-to-large terrestrial snail. The shell length of an adult is generally 7-8 cm, and at maximum it can grow to more than 20 cm. It is nocturnal and omnivorous, mostly active in humid environments, and likes to appear in the rain and at night. Usually it hides in cool, shady places, and makes a layer of white membrane (epiphragm) over the shell opening, leaving only a small hole for breathing, retracting the snail flesh into the shell to prevent dehydration, and coming out again after the environment improves.
Its food includes crops, forest trees, fruit trees, vegetables, flowers and other plants. When hungry, it also eats paper and the corpses of its companions, and can even gnaw and digest cement. It can harm more than 500 kinds of crops. This species is an intermediate host of many human and animal parasites and pathogenic bacteria, especially spreading tuberculosis and eosinophilic meningitis, and eating it is extremely harmful. The African giant snail can lay 30 to 700 eggs at a time and reproduces very quickly.
It is one of the first 16 invasive alien species in China and is listed in the "List of Invasive Alien Species of China". It is extremely harmful to vegetables and other crops and is a national entry-exit class II quarantine pest of China.
What Do Snails Eat
1. Snails like to eat the leaves of green plants and the leaves of succulent green vegetable leaves, melons and fruits, vines and other plants (add a small amount of concentrated feed; chick feed, piglet feed, rice, vegetable bean cake, rice bran, etc.), and the feed given should be sprayed wet with water.
2. Generally in spring feed cabbage, green vegetables, lettuce and other plants; in summer you can feed various melon and fruit peel residues, sugarcane, sunflower leaves, etc.; in autumn and winter feed vegetable leaves, potato slices, carrots, etc. The white jade snail does not eat green grass or weeds, and refuses to eat onions, ginger, garlic, chives, mustard and other foods with strong odors.
3. Melons, fruits and tubers should be cut into thin strips or thin slices before feeding, and attention should be paid to the diversity of food to prevent picky eating.
4. In order to speed up growth and increase the egg-laying rate, it is best to add crushed wheat bran, rice bran, tofu residue, yeast powder, soybean powder, fish meal, bone meal, shell powder or stone powder and other mixed concentrated feed to the feed.
5. Commonly used feed formula: rice bran and wheat bran 50%, shell powder 40%, yeast powder 8%. Others (fish meal, soybean powder, flour) and trace elements and special additives 2%. The amount of concentrated feed added accounts for 10%-15% of the total feed. Feeding should be at around 6 p.m., reaching a peak from 20:00 to 24:00, and stopping feeding at 6 a.m. the next day.
Are Snails Poisonous
Snails are terrestrial shelled mollusks that have lived on Earth since ancient and distant times. Most snails are poisonous. Only a few are non-poisonous. In China there are about 11 species with edible value, such as the brown cloud agate snail, the tall spired snail, the Hainan hard snail, the wrinkled scar hard snail, the Jiangxi bradybaena snail, the Ma's bradybaena snail, the white jade snail, etc. The snails that are used as food and artificially farmed around the world are mainly four kinds: the French snail, the garden snail, the agate snail and the white jade snail.
The Medicinal Value of Snails
Snails are not only a high-protein, low-fat nutritional health food, but also have a certain medicinal value. Snails have a long history in China as medicinal animals used to treat diseases. They were recorded long ago in many ancient books. Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica records the snail's form, living habits, as well as its medicinal uses and medicinal properties in the greatest detail. Both snail meat and shell can be used as medicine to clear heat, detoxify, reduce swelling, relieve asthma, soften hardness and treat hernia. Dry the snail and crush it, roast fresh snail meat dry in a tile, and grind it into powder. Effects: eliminate phlegm, clear heat and detoxify, promote urination. Indications: swollen toxins, hemorrhoids and fistula, sore throat, swollen pharynx, asthma, dehydration, infantile umbilical wind, nosebleeds, deafness, rectal prolapse, hernia, sores and swelling, etc. Snails processed into medicine can treat bedwetting in children, red and white dysentery, etc.
Snail enzyme can be extracted from the digestive gland of snails. Snail enzyme can be used as a biological agent for dissolving cell walls and has been increasingly widely used in cell biology and genetics research. According to reports: from one milliliter of snail digestive fluid, an average of 100—120 milligrams dry weight of snail enzyme can be obtained, and each gram of snail enzyme is priced at 25 grams of RMB.
When it comes to snails, I think everyone is very familiar with them. Many people have seen snails, but some people do not know much about snails. In fact, the nutritional value of snails is very high. They are rich in protein, and people in many places treat snails as a delicious dish.