A Diet Question (or two)

[kb.trekkie]

I was wondering if crude fat, protein, and fiber were good for snails. Does they help them grow better?  Are they needful to include in my snails' diet?

[crucify]

Mine love a good bit of protein. When my giant reticulata first got in the house, he was chewing all over my hand until I put a dog biscuit in his mouth, and then he wouldn't stop munching on it. In the wild snails and slugs will happily gnaw on carcasses and a lot of really gross things, they don't really get fresh lettuce and cucumber or sweet potato served to them in the wild. If they do, it's because they found someone's vegetable patch and now they're eating it.

[morningcoffee]

Jan 20, 2014 16:17:39 GMT kb.trekkie said:

I was wondering if crude fat, protein, and fiber were good for snails. Does they help them grow better?  Are they needful to include in my snails' diet?

Snails should have a varied diet. As far as I know there's not much knowledge about what nutrition snails specifically need in their diet but if anyone knows otherwise then please feel free to share!

For fibre, if you're feeding them a variety of raw fruits and vegetables (which you should be!) then they should be getting plenty of this.

Yes, they should have protein also as part of a varied diet. My snails always really enjoyed eating peanuts (groundnuts), which are a good source of protein. Many snails also enjoy eating seeds like pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds which are also a protein source.
Some snails seem to enjoy eating various animal products and as crucify said, many snails in the wild would commonly eat other dead snails and slugs, along with animal carcasses etc. If you want to try giving your snails some animal products, you can try boiled egg, beef mince, boiled chicken, soaked cat or dog kibble, etc.

As for fat, I don't know. I would imagine that the fat they get from their regular varied diets would be plenty without needing to add extra. If you want to try this, then peanuts are rich in saturated fats.