A few days ago I started a grand snail experiment. I gathered them, put them in housing (a plastic tote with soil, greenery, food, etc) in an attempt to get them to breed so I had a continuous source of protein for my chickens to eat. It sounded great, I found instructions online from others who had done it, and I did as they instructed. Easy, right?

And then I found the snail poop.

Snails are small. Who would have guessed their poop is so large!?! And stringy and sticky. And of course it’s all over everything in the bin – it’s not like snails are trained to go only in one corner. It’s even on the sides and lid! I’m going to have to add “snail poop maintenance” to my list of chores, and I don’t even know how to do that! I guess I wipe it off, maybe with a damp paper towel, or find some other trial-and-error method of dealing with it.

But the point of all this is – NOBODY mentioned this! Not in the descriptions of snail raising I found. Not in the descriptions or photos of snail habitats I examined. Nowhere.  So although I’ve known this mantra the whole time, it bears repeating (now that I’ve remembered it) – don’t believe everything you read on the internet. It’s just too easy to remove the not-so-good parts, or even whole sections of things.

I’m still continuing my snail-raising experiment. And I for sure will be amending my instructions for how to do this to reflect whatever way I find to deal with the droppings!