Breeding
Toes - 4mm long at 1 week old!
Snails are HERMAPHRODITES which means they are both boys and girls when it comes to mating. If the snails are happy and content in their environment, if there is more than one snail there and if they are about the same size it is very likely the snails will mate.
Mating itself is quite cute and looks as though the snails are kissing and if succesful allows one snail to bury itself and lay about 100 eggs. They could lay several clutches of eggs after just one mating if they are happy enough.
It is even possible for you to get eggs from your snail, even if it lives alone because it could have mated succesfully several months earlier and kept them inside itself until it was happy enough to lay.
Sometimes we do not want hundreds of babies snails in our tank though and the best way to get rid of the eggs is to take them out of the tank when you find them and put them in a small bag. Put this bag in the freezer for 2 days - this will stop any fertilised eggs growing and kill them humanely. These eggs can then be safely thrown away with out a hundred baby Giant African Land Snails escaping from the bin into your garden!
The eggs look like small polystyrene balls about 2-4 mm in size. I have kept just a couple of eggs from a clutch in the past and even missed an egg when clearing them out of the tank, which has resulted in my new additions which you can see in the gallery (the baby snails look so cute.)
The eggs will hatch safely with the big snails around but as I had a spare tank (after mum and dad bought me the big tank) I have set it up as a nursery tank, for the little ones to grow to a good size (about the size of a 5 pence piece) before I put them all in together.
Mating itself is quite cute and looks as though the snails are kissing and if succesful allows one snail to bury itself and lay about 100 eggs. They could lay several clutches of eggs after just one mating if they are happy enough.
It is even possible for you to get eggs from your snail, even if it lives alone because it could have mated succesfully several months earlier and kept them inside itself until it was happy enough to lay.
Sometimes we do not want hundreds of babies snails in our tank though and the best way to get rid of the eggs is to take them out of the tank when you find them and put them in a small bag. Put this bag in the freezer for 2 days - this will stop any fertilised eggs growing and kill them humanely. These eggs can then be safely thrown away with out a hundred baby Giant African Land Snails escaping from the bin into your garden!
The eggs look like small polystyrene balls about 2-4 mm in size. I have kept just a couple of eggs from a clutch in the past and even missed an egg when clearing them out of the tank, which has resulted in my new additions which you can see in the gallery (the baby snails look so cute.)
The eggs will hatch safely with the big snails around but as I had a spare tank (after mum and dad bought me the big tank) I have set it up as a nursery tank, for the little ones to grow to a good size (about the size of a 5 pence piece) before I put them all in together.
