Building a snail farm

The snail business basically involves three different, but much related levels, that otherwise none would have sense without the others: Raising, processing and sales, in that order.

That is, there would be needed three different structures for a same purpose.

- First, the snail farm will be designed according the sale volumes in function to the demand.
- Second: the snail processing plant will not be so complicated, but it does have a relative important cost.

- Snail selling structure

We can deduce that the international sale cost will be divided in three. If we decide to outsource the two final stages we will be getting a small part of that selling price, or worse, not even cover the snail farming costs.

That is, the problem to resolve passes through the snail product processing for sale. This takes us to the conclusion that before putting up a snails farm, we have to have clear in mind if we are going to do it by our own or we will outsource. If it is the latter, we must have the exact cost of the snail processing (in the case of being able to rent the structure or the services), or the price the processing company will pay for our snail products, if it buys from us. Got this numbers, we can make our calculations on the probable area and profits.

Building a snail farm can be done with creativity and a “bit” of money, but a snail processing plant has to follow the rules and policies of state and sanitary authorities, lots of money and a bit of creativity.

You can choose to build installations to produce among 1000 to 2000 pounds a month. As long as the production increases, the initial investment will increase.
Getting the union of a group of snail producers of no more than 10 would be a great solution.

In fact, what the buyer will demand will be a determined volume of snails and a determined delivery frequency.

But, do all buyers demand the same quantity? The answer can be found through a market research. It is easy to suppose the resistance of other not so big “buyers”. There is the big chance for the small snail producer.

Snail farms

For raising snails there are at least two types of snail farms. Open panels are the oldest; they date back from the Roman, when they developed the production of snails in open, fresh and sunny places as the walls of their houses.
Nowadays, this mechanism has been intensely modified into walls of 18 to 21 feet tall with irrigation through aspersion, halls and shelters, with complementary plants for their nutrition.

Other type of farms the closed panel that consists of the adaptation of a hermetic place as a barn with plantations, which is conditioned with temperature and humidity equipment.

This type of snail farm is the most preferred by professional snail farmers to ensure the security and wellbeing of snails, which are fragile creatures that like to crawl over different surfaces, therefore they get hard to find by the human eye.

Special: Raising Snail Business

Part I

Due to the increasing demand of snail in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries,snail farming have become a very interesting and lucrative business you can start with a relatively small budget and in your own place.
We are going to present a series of posts that will explain the basics you need to know on the raising snail business:

How much space do I need to raise snails?

Each type of snail breeds, according to its complexity, present different yields. This is directly related to the quantity of space you used to obtain a determined quantity of snails in a determined time.

When we talk about an intensive system, the performances are better and the space to occupy is minor, but that surface is much more expensive since you have to control temperature, moisture and electricity.

Different is the Italian system or complete biological cycle, where the soil surface of the snail farm is very large but only consists on one cultivated field.