Giant African Snails

[Catherine]

I am glad they traveled safely. Albinos should be interesting. It makes sense to keep them separate if they are different colours. At least they are small enough to use the set up you have, at least for now.

So the big ones are egg laying. That will be fun, watching for the eggs to hatch and watching the babies grow up. Winter can't be too far from over if we have baby snails on the way.

[hungrypigs]

(01-28-2014, 09:39 AM)Catherine Wrote: I am glad they traveled safely. Albinos should be interesting. It makes sense to keep them separate if they are different colours. At least they are small enough to use the set up you have, at least for now.

So the big ones are egg laying. That will be fun, watching for the eggs to hatch and watching the babies grow up. Winter can't be too far from over if we have baby snails on the way.

I haven't seen any eggs in there yet. I won't be keeping many of the eggs because apparently they can lay a lot and the last thing we want is to be overrun with them.

[Catherine]

I gather you could end up with hundreds of them. I know from my aquarium days. One snail can fill a tank. Are the eggs big enough to see individually. It would be fun to hatch a few, but not a few thousand.

[hungrypigs]

(01-30-2014, 03:17 PM)Catherine Wrote: I gather you could end up with hundreds of them. I know from my aquarium days. One snail can fill a tank. Are the eggs big enough to see individually. It would be fun to hatch a few, but not a few thousand.

Today when cleaning out the snails I found some eggs had been laid in Tommy Zoom and Smog's tank. I think Tommy Zoom laid them (he's the biggest and I read that if one snail is bigger than the other the bigger one would be the one to lay the eggs.). I transferred the eggs and I reckon that there was about 60 eggs, into a smaller tank mainly so the kids can watch and observe the eggs hatching etc.

The eggs are quite small and they are white/yellow in colour so you couldn't miss seeing them.

[Tobi]

This must be fascinating. I have never seen snail eggs! What an interesting experience it must be to watch them hatch. Do the eggs need special temperatures?

[Catherine]

I was just thinking about the snails today and I was going to ask how they are doing.
Now I know.

How interesting to watch snail eggs hatch. Any idea how long it takes?

[hungrypigs]

Apparently the eggs could take from between several days to a few weeks to hatch so guess we are on egg alert at the moment. The eggs are very small but they can be seen very clearly, they are white/yellow in colour. Exciting times!!

[Catherine]

So snail gestation is from 3-21 days. How do they manage that. The numbers are so different. It will be fun the keep checking then, not knowing when they could hatch. Any egg check could be the lucky one that gets to see them fresh hatched or even better, actually hatching.

[hungrypigs]

(03-09-2014, 04:15 PM)Catherine Wrote: So snail gestation is from 3-21 days. How do they manage that. The numbers are so different. It will be fun the keep checking then, not knowing when they could hatch. Any egg check could be the lucky one that gets to see them fresh hatched or even better, actually hatching.

Here's some updated photos of the snails.

[Catherine]

That is so cute. They have a dish of veggies just like the guinea pigs.
They enjoy then just as much as the piggies, they just take a little longer to eat them.

Do they have individual likes and dislikes or is it hard to tell. Their shells are a bit different looking aren't they, so you can tell them apart. It must be fun watching them eat. If you put a plate of food in, do the rush to it?