Best/ favorite foods??

[newtothis]

What is your favorite thing to feed your snails and what is healthiest? Mine LOVE cucumbers, but I know they don’t have a lot of nutritional value to it! They also really like spinach. What is your favorite

[rubberman]

Spinach is good for them to mate. If you can alternate their diet it's even better. Veggies contain incomplete proteins (hence the 5 a day campaign) so feeding them one type of veg doesn't really give them the best diet. Mine also LOVE cucumber and also Chinese leaves but I like to feed them different things.

My regime

Spinach, corn (baby corn is great), tomato and lettuce and a random none citrus fruit all on different days. I keep a radish halved in the enclosure as well as they last for weeks and they do munch on them from time to time. I throw them a slice of cucumber about twice a week mostly for its water content rather than nutritional value or as a treat. I have grapes in there with them at the moment but they don't seem to care for it at all.

Don't bother trying them with herbs as they don't like them at all. For carbohydrates, you might want to try them with cooked sweet potato (cooking it removes most of the starch and makes it softer for them).

As we don't eat them but snails do I rarely give them carrot or parsnips but you might?

I think mine are just picky. It's easier getting my grandson to eat fruit than it is my snails lol

[morningcoffee]

The healthiest thing for snails is a varied diet of species-appropriate foods, including an occasional protein source, so that they can get a wide variety of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.

What they like to eat often depends on the individual snail, the way they've grown up, and the species - for example my wild-caught African snails liked to eat things like yams and plantains, whereas my British garden snails wouldn't look at them at all, and African snails that were captive bred were far less interested too. My Helix aspersa love cabbage but the Cepaea hate it. Of course tree snails have totally different diets to land snails, etc. So there's no single answer for what the "best" food is.

Spinach is fine for them to have sometimes, but try not to feed it too frequently as it is high in oxalates which can inhibit calcium absorption.

The one thing that's been almost universally loved by every snail I've kept regardless of species is raw sweet potato, particularly if sliced thinly.

[footloose]

Cucumber does seem to be a favorite, as is fish food flakes and seaweed pellets. Invertebrate food made for shrimp also is quickly consumed. Cauliflower is tolerated. What about corn meal?

[footloose]

Update: gave them some sweet potato. The slices were gone by morning, so they must have liked it, but their absolute favorite is romaine lettuce, which they plow through like knives in butter.

[rubberman]

Make sure you give that lettuce a good washing mate. They use tonnes of pesticides when growing it!

[footloose]

The produce is sprayed with water throughout the day at the grocery store, is that adequate? I confess to not washing the veggies at home.

[alvi]

my helix pomatia LOVE sweet potato. they also like romaine lettuce. i had one who liked carrots a lot but the others are more ambivalent. i now also feed them a snail mix i make based off a recipe someone linked - corn meal, hemp flour, oats, sunflower seeds, and gourd/pumpkin seeds all pulverized and mixed with water. you can mix a calcium powder into this as well if your snails are picky about eating it!

[simple]

Mine love orange carrots (they avoid the yellow and purple ones for some reason), pumpkin, lettuce, sweet potato, basil, and anything that looks like cucumber.
I know it's healthy for them but I usually avoid feeding them fruit, it attracts fruit flies and gets moldy fast.

[rubberman]

The only fruit mine will eat is tomatoes for some reason. Everything else they leave. I do have an avocado in the fridge right now I'm going to try them on but I hear you about the fruit flies! Even here we get those b****y things.

[footloose]

So cornmeal is ok? There are reports on gardening sites that say cornmeal is used as a bait, and snails (and slugs) will explode after consuming it because it expands in their gut. An awful myth I presume.

[morningcoffee]

Jan 20, 2019 4:49:25 GMT footloose said:

So cornmeal is ok? There are reports on gardening sites that say cornmeal is used as a bait, and snails (and slugs) will explode after consuming it because it expands in their gut. An awful myth I presume.

Definitely don't give it to them dry, starchy grain foods can indeed cause them to die if fed dry. If you want to try it, soak it thoroughly in hot water before offering it.

[footloose]

Thanks for the tip. I wa close to sprinkling lightly misted (probably too dry) cornmeal in their food dish, then decided I better ask first. Red 
lettuce also appears to be a favorite. 

[rubberman]

This stuff isn't bad

[footloose]

New favorite food: radish leaves. They definitely like this above all else, at least mine do. Try it!

[natalia_atxa]

My snails' favourite food is without doubt sweet potato. It seems to be a great food for them. It makes them grow faster and they get a reddish tone in their shells which I find very pretty

[rubberman]

Mine never touch that lol no idea why.

[mutantboy]

Mine particularly love courgette, sweet potato, and often go droopy eyed for their snail mixes. I also tend to give them apple, pear, banana, melon, butternut squash, carrot, cabbage, grapes, tomatoes, and broccoli (but it is a bit smelly so I don't give them that too often).

[seastar]

Mine have a soft spot for turtle pellets and carrots. Lemonade even ate a full pellet in less than 30 seconds once!

[etana]

Sweet potato is a permanent favourite of pretty much all of my snails. I think green beans make them look absolutely blissful too. I also feed them courgette, eggplant, red sweet pepper, avocado, pumpkin seeds, corn on the cob, bananas and plantains, apples, pears, soaked spirulina, blueberries, peas, and really many kinds of various different veg/fruit leftovers from cooking (never anything related to citrus fruits or onions though). Egg yolk is a favourite protein source, but ground beef is usually eaten well too. High quality dog food will also work but you have to be very careful when choosing it. Cucumber and very light green salads are only a rare treat here. 

Nettles collected from the wild and left for some time to wilt are great and very healthy for them. Dandelion leaves are fun to give too, though they don't have to be wilted, only well washed.

[GailTheSnail]

Mar 23, 2019 11:46:34 GMT seastar said:

Mine have a soft spot for turtle pellets and carrots. Lemonade even ate a full pellet in less than 30 seconds once!

What kind of turtle pellets? I’ve been looking to mix up there diet but I’m alqays so scared when introducing new foods. I actually made a post an hour ago about a snail mix I just purchased from an Etsy seller so I’ll report back

[veshana]

I have 2 different species. I used humus from the gutters that never get cleaned for their substrate. It was sterilized first.

They have completely ignored grapes, spinach, romaine, raddichio, zucchini, carrot, straeberries and mushrooms so far. I may be missing some.

Dilbert is an Anguispira Alternate. They like decaying plant matter and algae according to my research. He eats the mess out of the eggshells (farm fresh from my grammie) but otherwise I have only seen him chewing on the substrate.

Snailey is a Mesodon Zaletus. I haven't been able to find any good info on what Mesodon eats specifically so I am experimenting. She wouldn't come out for days. The only thing I saw her eat at first was a bit of substrate. Strangely the thing that got her out of the castle? Watermelon! I tossed a decent chunk in because we were eating it and figured why not. I hadn't seen her out in days. As soon as the sun went down she was on that melon XD

[pluto]

My garden snails absolute favorite is bok choy. Runner ups include sweet potato, lettuce, bok choy, and then carrots, apples, and maybe tomatoes. I used to feed them a lot of spinach, but noticed eventually the stopped eating it as much (which was fine, as that was also around the time I found out about the oxalates n such). I give them other foods every now and then as well... one thing they did not know what to do with was raspberries, lol. One poked their head inside out of curiosity but no munching ensued, haha

[tony]

It's interesting that snails of the same species can have different preferences, and it seems pretty random. Mine like green peas and corn the most, they'll eat carrots and sweet potato but if I put a variety of veggies out, they will b-line towards the peas and corn and ignore sweet potato and carrots completely. Makes me wonder if they have preferences based on what nutrients they may be lacking from their current diet/nutritional state. In other words, garden snails that normally eat decaying plant matter and soil are more attracted to food sources that better counteract the nutrient deficiencies that they have from the type of plant matter they normally eat.

[shysnail]

My two bubs are pretty good. They eat their leafy greens. Their favourite is pak choi. They will absolutely demolish it. They also like rocket, an occasional basil leaf, coriander (I was surprised with that one!) and cauliflower leaves. They're having their first lettuce leaves today. I normally don't buy it since the nutritional content isn't great, but it was on sale, so what the heck.

Their most favourite foods are mushroom and aubergine. I've tried fruits with them but not a single one have they really taken to. Sometimes they'll eat a little if there's nothing better on offer. I have a fruity snail mix from Etsy that I've heard rave reviews about, but mine are even picky with that.

I give them a few drops of unsweetened soya milk twice a week which usually goes down well, too, and is another source of calcium for them.