Detailed Guide to Indoor Box-Style Rearing Techniques for the White Jade Snail

   When rearing indoors, the facilities and conditions vary widely; breeders can choose flexibly according to their own conditions, adapting to local circumstances and making do with whatever is available.
    This method can use an empty room or an attached part of a building, such as a balcony, corridor, passageway, basement, vegetable cellar, or a semi-underground rearing shed built for the purpose, as the rearing site. Rearing boxes are set up and the snails are kept inside the boxes. It is one of the most common methods for rearing snails in rearing boxes.
    The rearing boxes can be made from scrap wood, old packing crates, non-toxic plastic boards, bamboo, willow twigs, and the like, but materials containing aromatic substances, tannins, resin liquids, or unusual odors must not be used, nor may materials contaminated by lead-containing paint, asphalt, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, radioactive substances, and the like. The size and materials of the rearing box can be determined according to the rearing conditions. General specifications for rearing boxes: wooden boards 1.0——1.5 cm thick can be made into a wooden box 60 cm long, 40 cm wide, and 35 cm high, or 75 cm long, 45 cm wide, and 35 cm high. Ready-made wooden boxes of different specifications can also be used, but the height of the wooden box should preferably not exceed 35 cm; if it is too high, when snails fall from the top or the walls of the box, they easily break their shells, which in mild cases affects growth and in severe cases causes death. The box lid can be covered with plastic or wire window screening, which both prevents the snails from escaping and makes observation easy. The bottom area of the rearing box should preferably not exceed 1 sq m, for ease of moving and management. When the rearing scale is relatively large, the rearing boxes can be placed on racks and stacked to make full use of space, forming three-dimensional rearing.
    For breeder snail rearing boxes, the mesh opening of the lid net is generally 10——15 mm, and 50——70 snails about to lay eggs can be placed inside. For adult snail boxes, the mesh opening of the lid net is 8——10 mm, and 100——150 adult snails can be placed inside. For young snail boxes, the mesh opening of the lid net is 2——3 mm, and 300——500 hatched young snails can be placed inside. The size of the mesh openings of the breeder snail rearing box depends on the size of the snail eggs, and the principle should be that the eggs do not fall through; the same applies to young snail boxes.
    Several slits can be left in the walls of the rearing box, or a movable screen door can be made, to facilitate observation, feeding, and cleaning. The bottom of the box can be spread with a layer of small crushed stone or small pebbles to help drainage, and on top of that a layer of 8——10 cm of sandy loam mixed with humus soil and sand; some earthworms can also be placed in it for mixed rearing. In some places, breeders spread foam plastic at the bottom of the box for rearing and have also achieved certain results; its advantage is that it is convenient for cleaning excrement and food residue, but it somewhat hinders and affects snail egg-laying, and the cost is relatively high, so it is mostly not adopted.
    To make full use of the site, the rearing boxes can be placed in overlapping stacks for three-dimensional rearing. In three-dimensional rearing, the height of the overlapping layers of rearing boxes is determined by ease of operation. For large-scale indoor rearing, a production unit of 50——300 sq m can be designed, with racks set up on both sides using angle steel or other materials. The lowest layer of the rack is a cement board or brick platform. A drainage ditch can be set up on the platform, and between the two rows of racks is a walkway for ease of operation and management. The spacing between each layer of the rack is 30——35 cm, with a width of 40 cm, and the feeding trough of each rearing box just protrudes 10 cm out from the rack. The rack can be divided into 5 layers, and each layer can hold 200 rearing boxes.