In my first post on this subject I went over how I turned a desecrated piece of urban land into a vibrant ecosystem, in the hopes of creating a beneficial environment to raise snails free range.
You can see that post here:
@leifasaur/free-range-snail-farm-101
My attempts at a snail farm were very experimental combining permaculture and free range snail farming and sadly it did not work out all that well for me even though I learned a lot and will when I have some land of my own that I live on I will give it another try.
Some of my failures and things that I learned along the way:
Consistent watering:
I had tried to automate the watering as much as possible and I did this by setting up the misting and drip irrigation system that would be used for 30 minutes in the morning and 1 hour in the evening to keep everything damp and humid. This worked great when it was working. There were a few problems though. The lines I got in my cheap irrigation system, one set was a little bigger than another set and they did not stay well on the barbed fittings. They would burst and since I did not live where the snail farm was it would take me a few days to figure this out sometimes. I ended up using zip ties as small hose clamps for this issue. The other issue was that I had an automated water timer that I ordered online and it was a piece of shit. I have tried 3 of these now and they are all shit and I do not have a good local option to get others. My business partner who lived at the house where the farm is did his best to turn the water off and on when it needed but like any human it does not always work out.Pest control:
The free range system is very susceptible to pests. I did not fully get a handle on all the predators in the system. I also did not want to use any chemicals, or even neem oil for pest control. It is still not fully known the effects of neem oil on the snails and snail are very susceptible to poisoning from any sort of chemical. I also don't want to use chemicals at all anyway. I had very large colonies of fire ants in my farm they were there from the time I started the excavation and these guys can really bite. Their bite is like a sting and burns for about a day and itches for a few days afterward and leaves a red mark for about a week. I read that they are able to signal each other for a coordinated bite, and when they bite they do not let go. They will have multiple queens in a colony, and workers can come and go freely from neighboring colonies.
I was not able to fully conclude if these ants had effects on the snails or not as I saw mixed evidence. For instance an adult snail could sleep on top of colony during the day without any issue from the ants. Where as if I touch the colony they will go wild. But did they attack adult snails at night as they are active and moving over colonies? Does the slime from the adult snail keep the ants at bay? I am not sure.
Seemed that the more probable issue with the ants was the eating of the snail eggs, and the snails themselves during the Juvenal stage. I am sure the ants were predators at this stage. I tried using boiling water on the ant colonies without any luck they would only move around and build a new one. Seems there is only a few options and some not practical for the size of my farm. All of these options are also not possible while keeping the snail population alive also.
One way is to put dry organic matter over all the soil and burn it as hot as possible. I could not do this because I was next door to a filling station and having a fire like that is probably not advisable. Also this kills a lot of the good biology in the soil. I fear the ants would also just go deep enough in their colonies to survive this. This would also ruin the whole pin and leave me start at square one again.
And then of course you could poison colonies and leave out bait for them. This would take time and I do not know how long the place would be contaminated for after and the effects on snails.
Other pests included birds because of the open top. The adult snails would hide themselves pretty well during the day and were large enough they may not have been attractive to a lot of birds but I am sure that the juviniel snails were. The only solution here would be netting over the top and this was very expensive and would need more replacement over time. It was also not that feasible with the trees in place too.
Ultimately I think the biggest hit to the farm was rodents. There are a number of large rats in the city, and even at the garden at my house I saw a long nosed shrew. At the snail farm I was seeing some tunnels, I was seeing shells with missing bodies, and rodent droppings. Eventually my business partner saw on a few occasions what he described as a huge gray rate.
Management of some of these predators could have been managed if I lived on site and I could take methodical long term daily actions against them but I did not have the luxury.
Time
This was the real killer with the combination of the other two points above. I did not live on the site where the snail farm was. It was where my office was and I would go there 3 times a week. This worked out quite well until Covid and the lockdown hit. We were in lockdown for 3 weeks and things were even restricted for a long time after that. I would make it out the office at most once a week even after the lockdown. All of the predators had a hay day and ate a lot of snails. It was also the height of the dry season and the water was not perfect. Basically after lockdown I was not left with much also taking into account escapees.
The pictures here were taken after this point and I cleaned up the over growth of the pin and stopped watering to clear out what few snails remained.
I will try snail farming again with everything I have learned when I have my own land that I live on and I can manage the system closely. I would do both free range and a soil less system and give the juveniles a chance before moving them into the free range to fatten them up.
I have one more post coming up for part 3 where I turn the abandoned snail pin into an ongoing urban farm.