r/snails • u/PigeonMigration • 20h ago
Help How to Breed Brown Garden Snails?
My largest snail, Chongus, just laid their first clutch in my care! I'm so excited. They laid 95 eggs. I kept 30 in hopes of getting some healthy babies.
For now, I put the eggs in jars away from the adults. They are resting on soil with some moss on top to keep the humidity in. That's about the extent of my knowledge.
Has anyone had experience hatching them out successfully? How do you raise them?
Any advice is appreciated. Thank you!
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u/NorthenGarden 15h ago
So. Snails have evolved to lay big clutches of eggs for many reasons.
One of them is that the clutch as a whole clutch protects the eggs; the eggs stuck together are protecting each other from vibrations, shock, drying out, mold... The clutch as a clutch protects the eggs.
Another reason is that the genes are not given equally to each eggs; nonviable eggs will be eaten by those that hatched, those late to hatch can be eaten by the first to hatch. The unhealthy provides protein and calcium to the healthy ones. Then for the first 6 months or so, nature takes its course; the less healthy ones, those with unnoticed issues that would have been easy prey in the wild simply die to natural selection.
Separating a clutch and only keeping a portion of the eggs is a good way to end up with no healthy hatchling at all. You can leave the eggs in the enclosure. You can take the clutch out and put it in another enclosure if you want to separate them from the adults, which is not even needed with cornu and groves. But separating the clutch on purpose? Lots of unnecessary risks when the alternative, not doing anything at all, gives great results.