Snail Ranching Catching On Fast

Snail Ranching Catching On Fast LIVESTOCK Exotic Animals 19-4-33 Are you looking for a new farm enterprise? If so, here's one you can run out of a garage or any small farm building. "Snail ranching is still mostly a curiosity in the Midwest, but it's starting to catch on," says Shane Farnsworth, founder of U.S. Snail, a 6-month old snail-growing enterprise based in Omaha, Neb. U.S. Snail has been running ads in Mid-western farm magazines in the hope of attracting enough snail ranchers so it can offer a steady fresh supply of "escargot" to restaurants. The U.S. imported 787,772 pounds of canned snails last year, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Much of that came from Taiwan, Farnsworth says. There, snails grow to the size of softballs and are chopped into little pieces that resemble the smaller brown snails chefs prefer. Most of the rest came from France, he says, which exports lower-quality chopped-up Giant African snails instead of the gourmet snails that country is known for. So neither major source of snails provides the U.S. with the fresh whole snail variety restaurant owners and chefs want to offer their customers, he says. "Professional snail ranching has tremendous potential because demand is high and supply is low," he says. U.S. Snail provides breeding snails in lots of 250 for $625 to beginning ranchers. The company also provides technical, marketing and research support. Starting equipment includes several 1 by 2 by 3-ft. humidified plastic tubs with flower pots of soil inside. Snails thrive in 68? temperatures, 90% humidity and 9 1/2 hours of daylight, Farnsworth says. Many growers find garages make perfect "confinement barns" for snails, he says. Each snail lays 50 to 100 eggs in the soil. (Snails have both male and female sex genes so they all lay eggs.) Eggs hatch in 21 days and are market ready in seven months. A market snail weighs 8 to 10 grams and is about 1 1/4 in. long. Snails have a lifespan of four to five years. In two breeding cycles over 16 months about 500,000 snails will be produced, he says. Live snails can fetch as much as 60 cents apiece, so potential revenue is as much as $300,000 in 16 months, he says. Besides selling them on local markets, snails can also be shipped live to markets outside of a local area or sold to distributors, he adds. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, U.S. Snail, 9755 Q Street, Suite 226, Omaha, Neb. 68127 (ph 402 597-6898). (Lincoln Star).

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