Snail farm can be integrated into a livestock complex

This is exactly what an Irish farmer did to increase income, and he raises laying snails using his own technology for field fattening.

Agriland journalist Breifn O'Brien visited a unique Irish farm in County Cavan where Peter Monaghan, who raises 20 dairy cows, founded Inis Escargot, a snail farm.

Monaghan has been a snail farmer for five years and has ambitious plans to expand his farm as well as attract more people to the industry. He shared his professional secrets in an interview with Agriland.

“Snail breeding is profitable if you master this art. Breeding usually begins in the first week of January and continues until the end of March. Approximately 300 kg of snails are taken from hibernation and placed on special tables in the nursery, the farmer says. - After waking up from hibernation, snails usually begin to breed after 2-3 weeks, and then we set up “pots” for laying hens, from where eggs (or caviar) are retrieved every two days.

A fence is placed around the edge of each breeding table. Adult snails are fenced off with salt, and young, more sensitive snails with lime or soap.

Eggs are placed in polyethylene containers from 2000 to 3000 eggs/container. We add mist to them to keep the eggs moist. Our snails lay very well here in the breeding group, we have found that our clutches are up to 150 eggs per clutch, while the average on other farms is 100-120.

Then, within 14 days, small snails appear and the next stage of the fattening process begins. The young snails are moved onto vertical plastic curtains in the nursery and fed with rapeseed for the first time, followed by a high calorie, high calcium diet for young snails.

At first, they usually don't eat much of this food, maybe as little as half a kilo. By the time they leave the polytunnel, the snails will eat 15 kg of food per day for two.

After the sale of juveniles, about 1.2 million snails remain for adaptation in the polytunnel with subsequent hatching in the field until the second week of June. The final stage of fattening is the exit of snails into the field. A rapeseed field measuring just under 0.4 ha is surrounded by a galvanized coating and covered with bird netting. Here the snails have access to both rapeseed and food. In total, about 700 fodder boards are placed on the field, which are also needed for protection from the sun. Concentrates fed to snails have been increasing to a peak of 120 kg/day since early August.

Of the 1.2 million snails delivered to the final stage, 10,000 kg of snails will be sold ready-made, while about 900 kg of the best are left as stock repairs.

The farm is now a "seasonal production system". We complete the harvest by the end of October, close the store and go on a four-week vacation, and then in December the lights come on in the breeding department and the cycle begins again. In the future, we hope to have two harvests of snails a year.

There is currently no market for snails in Ireland, the largest markets are in Greece, where there are processing plants, as well as in France and Spain. Other countries buy local Irish snail and make a decent profit.

When I started raising snails, I knew the price I would get in advance, not like with cattle. Thanks to the climate in Ireland, there are all conditions for breeding snails. Here we can fatten them up faster than in any other country. The ideal finished snail weighs 10-12g. Larger snails are kept for breeding,” Monaghan said.

He also conducts training courses and hopes to build a network of successful snail farmers in Ireland with about 50 farms.

“There is no other farming business that is as lucrative as it has such a market for so much produce on such a small piece of land,” he said. - If my finished snails weigh an average of 10g and I sell 100,000 snails, that's 1 ton. 4.50 euro/kg per snail is a good margin for me. My expenses are kept to a minimum. If you get 4.50 euro/kg and sell 10 tons, it's profitable. Few meat farms make that kind of money.”