Giant African Land Snails - a good pet?

[strawberrypenguin]

Does anyone have Giant AfricanLand Snails? Thinking of possibly getting 6yo DS a pet (cage and a book on how to look after for Christmas with actual pet once he knows how to look after them)
I’d like a pet he can do most of the looking after himself with some help from us.
Do Giant African Land Snails make a good pet? I’d only get 1 as I don’t want them to breed!

I had a giant African snail as a 10 year old and loved it! Not a very cute pet but remember spending a lot of time with it. Until my cat ate it.

Leopard geckos are very easy to handle as well, but don't startle them or they'll shed their tails

Praying mantis? Great fun to watch them grow!

I had snails in my classroom for a year. They breed a lot. You need to freeze and kill the eggs quite often. The tank gets funky just before the eggs appear.

I had a Giant African Land snail called Victor. He was boring but I had him for 8 years. He would only eat cucumber and although he/she lived on his own there were no little Victors. I believe he enjoyed his day out to my place of work though.

Stick insects are prolific breeders, they just lay eggs without having sex. I had to crush the eggs at one point or I would have been overrun. Their limbs drop off as they get older too.

Now rats. Perfect in every way but not the right pet for a 6 year old.

The compost also attracted those little annoying fruit flies or fungus gnats or whatever the bloody things are called.

I was looking at getting one a few years back - Their £3 a snail price on eBay attached me most

I've had rats as a child, think I was about 7/8?

They're were brilliant and vastly entertaining. Never did I cry more than when one got a tumour and died - And the sister followed from separation anxiety 5 weeks later

Rats are the best pets ever (don't tell my cats). Not sure my dds friend thought so when one of mine stole her mini cheddar

Aw, Henry! God I miss my rats.

Snails are messy really! You have to remove uneaten food quick or it goes mouldy. The tank obviously gets slimy and you you need a good soil which you have to change regularly or it stinks. Oh and you need to keep it moist by spraying it.

They are cool to keep though I loved having mine!

Have you thought about sea monkeys? I had those too. Easier than snails.

I would say stick insects, giant millipedes, Madagascan hissing cockroaches or anything like that is probably better for a 6 year old.

If you are happy to do most of the hands on work, then yes to a reptile but it should never be his sole responsibility and defintely not a leopard gecko. If your Ds grabs the gecko by its tail, it will shed it.

Snakes are very low maintenance. Once you have the tank set up properly, they are lovely and easy to look after. Feed it once a week, spot clean it when needed, make sure the temps/humidity are spot on and then leave them to it.

Handle the snake when you want (apart from just after a feed or shedding) otherwise leave them to it

Aqua dragons my 6yr old fed them all the time for about a year. He carried on looking after them even when they had died in the hope there were some eggs in there to hatch.

I've had leopard geckos, created geckos and bearded dragons, they can cost a fortune at the vets due to people keeping them inappropriately, they need constant heat lamps which are a fire risk and would burn your son, their crickets can escape and infest your house, they can get metabolic bone disorder and other horrible diseases and carry salmonella.

Please do NOT GET a reptile unless you are an adult and have absolutely researched the commitments, they're not like fish that can just sit in a box forever. They are the wrong suggestion for a child of any age

Gerbils? Difficult to handle at that age but very entertaining and don't need to be cleaned out all the time.

Also if you have a snake, you will get bitten unless it's handled correctly. Again, they should not be kept by anyone who isn't an expert in reptiles, they should be licensed IMHO. So many reptiles get moved from home to home after people get bored.

I didnt get a rat as their life span is pretty short, but degus are fabulous! No smell, really active in the day, trainable (ish).

However my 6 year old completly lost interest.

We also had stick insects which were fab.

We had GALS for years. The kids loved them. Initially as babies they don't need a huge tank. Easy to care for and actually very interactive as they are hardy creatures. We had 2 from babies and after 2 years they were the size of a side plate! It gets more difficult the older they get due to egg laying which needs to be kept on top of but our children loved them.

We have tortoises now.

We used to have a pet snail in our loo. People used to go to the loo and disappear for hours. It was hypnotic watching him eat.

We've only had to get rid of snail eggs once. I think our snails tried having sex once but decided they didn't like it so have kept it platonic ever since.