'farming' garden snails- weird or not?

[BobbyBiscuits]

I've been 'farming' garden snails for eating for several years, but what do people think about this? Most of my immediate family think it's both cruel and gross. Others think they taste lovely, and don't see an issue.

I have a patio garden that gets infested with the wee feckers. They ate my new plant to a stick before in a day. Did beer traps etc but no avail.

I researched a great deal and found a method to use them to eat, and proceeded to do so.

Basically, I catch them, put about 12 in a big outdoor container with breathing holes, and put a carrot in to feed them. I clean their area out each day and then when it's time to eat them I withdraw the carrot till they make no stools. Then I can prepare them for cooking humanely by putting them to sleep first in the fridge.
I think it's a great way to get rid of garden pests and get protein.

Then I make lovely escargots.

Apart from the fact I already eat cows and other animals but not very often, aibu for doing this?

How long do they have to go without carrot before they stop producing stools?
I feel a bit sorry for them having a nice carrot and then starving!

garden snails?

No thank you.

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Some people like escargot. I don’t..but if they wanna do it they can.

Years ago, my grandads neighbour asked me about where they could buy some rabbits. Not pet rabbits, but rabbits they could breed to eat. Again, not my thing but power to them.

My personal philosophy is, you can eat whatever animal(what’s legal obviously) you want as long as it is reared and killed humanely. I might not like it but I will fight for your right to do it.

Haha, even starving rats don't like slugs! They have no protection other than their foul flavour.
(Don't worry I don't eat slugs, or any other garden critters!)

Also extremely protected. It's an offence to collect, sell or kill them.

I know of a location of a large population of Roman Snails. It's been deliberately camouflaged by the local wildlife trust because the one time they mentioned having a population in another location, the place was destroyed by the following Tuesday - they didn't just take every single snail, they pushed over an ancient drystone wall and churned through rare orchids with their 4x4, leaving livestock gates open (with the inevitable results for the animals).

Won't someone think about Brian from Magic Roundabout? 😢

No, no, no. I had escargot years ago in France, and was getting on OK with them till I thought, "These are just slugs with shells..." and that was the end of that.

@Majorpom I know, that's the bit where I feel sad. It's usually the same number of days they've had it for. Once stools are absent you shouldn't leave them more than another day.
So you can do it in 3 days or 5 weeks, but it's same time feeding v purging. Snails can live to about 5 years or more apparently. Not on my watch. Lol.

🤮

We have Roman snails in our garden. I took one off my shrub just yesterday. I didn't know they were protected. I didn't kill it, just sent it on its way.

We have hundreds of the other kind, but I'm not bloody eating them.

No I'm getting muddled up, we have banded snails not Roman snails. I thought the banded ones were Roman ones.

It's all too much for me.

Imagine being taken away from your loved one and imprisoned in a bucket and fed carrot and then shoved in a freezer and then boiled?

Your loved one waiting in the cabbage patch hoping for your safe return. 🥲

%3D

Do they have much goodness in them? Vitamins, protein etc?

Well done OP, I think its very enterprising and self sufficient of you. Its pretty much the same as eating mussels or oysters I suppose.

I know it's comforting to think of "putting them to sleep", but a fridge is really not a humane place for a live animal to be.

When I was in animal collage, if one of the rodents unexpectedly gave birth to a litter, the babies were popped into the fridge and then fed to the snakes

How many syns would garden snails be? Can only find Lidl ones on the SW app

How can the bit where you starve them be humane in any way whatsoever?

Do you have a family OP? Do you make it a family meal? I can't see many DC choosing to eat snails.

Personally I think this thread is a wind up. Nobody would do this in reality.

I had escargots in the South of France but there was so little to them and they were so much like eating snot that I just couldn't imagine farming them.

Chickens are starved before slaughter. I am not sure about other animals, but it is probably the same.

It's absolutely fine and a good use of them

I hope they are killed humanely, that is all

I like snails 🐌 (not slugs)

I actually think this is brilliant and I hope this isn't a wind up. Cheap, sustainable, hyper-local , what's not to like?! 😁

(We're veggie so not going to try it myself - as the children consider our garden snails as friends if not quite pets - but good for you OP)

Oh OK I did not know that. That's pretty horrendous. I couldn't watch them starve with my own eyes. Or 'purging' as the OP calls it.

I can actually taste bile....