Mortality & Disinfectant

We have suffered quite high mortality in the last few weeks. The literature suggests that we should expect a mortality of 25% and we must be getting close to that number now. I had assumed that this mortality would take place when they were very small but we lost very few then. The ones that seem to be dying are those which are small - about the size of a little fingernail. Perhaps this is just the time that they die if they are going to?

Up to now we have been cleaning the snails and their enclosure with water. We have a 5 litre hand spray that we use for the outdoor enclosure, and the small plastic box we just sponge down. I have now however taken delivery of a disinfectant to use on both enclosures. It is called Ark Klense and is designed for cleaning animal enclosures without harming the animals. Snails are regarded as pests by most people and many cleaning fluids will kill or injure them. Ark Klense is supposedly safe - although I will still use it sparingly. Snails do suffer from parasites, especially in farmed colonies so cleaning with disinfectant should help prevent this. The disinfectant itself was hard to get, I could only get it on line, and I bought it eventually from the RSPB website shop.

Large enclosure

Now that the danger of a late frost has passed we have moved some of our snails into our larger enclosure or the Snailarium. The Snailarium is a home made construction. We bought a wire compost bin and lined it with plastic. The top is hinged. The bottom of the compost bin was open so we have mounted the whole structure in a wooden base. This we filled with soil.

So far we have transferred about 15 snails. We move them when they are about thumb-nail size.

The problems of the Snailarium are now becomming evident. The Compost bin was a metre in height. We wanted this size as a metre cube will theoretically support 900 snails without any problems resulting from overcrowding. However it also means that it is very difficult to reach the bottom of Snailarium from the edge.

My second mistake to lay turf at the bottom of the Snailarium. My thinking was that this would be more comfortable and natural for the snails. I also thought the grass would break up any slime trails. When I put the grass in it was litle more than a centimetre or so high. I failed to appreciate that buy placing it in what was effectively a greenhouse would encourage it to grow. The base of the Snailarium now has a lush carpet of long grass. The snails love it, they snuggle down and are impossible to find. I am not sure how we will find them to get them out when they are big enough to eat!