Releasing garden snail pets into the wild?

[alexandra]

Hi, I am keeping ordinary garden snails as pets as some of you probably already know, and I'm thinking of releasing some into the wild. Even though I'm loathe to do it and will find it a bit tough, I'm finding myself swamped with the process of collecting their offspring, they produce hundreds (which I collect and release in a nearby field), and find I don't really have time to give them all as good a level of care as I'd like to, though I'm certainly not neglecting them.

Could someone give me a realistic outlook on releasing snails that have been kept for over a year as pets please? Would the snail have a harder time surviving? Does domestication make them more 'relaxed' sort of thing? If so is this worse if a snail has been brought up in captivity as some of mine has?

[coyote]

I'm not sure anyone really knows how to answer that question.

Snails learn what plants are food during the early part of their life. For future generations, you could feed them with a lot of the plants they would find in the area they'd be released into, so they would have something familiar to eat right away.

For your current generation of offspring I'm not sure how they would fare in terms of figuring out what's edible and what isn't in their new environment.

Have you thought about freezing future clutches of eggs to prevent too many offspring that would need to be released?

[alexandra]

I have tried freezing the eggs, but the snails produce so many of them, and they are mostly all buried within the substrate, so it's time consuming work, and as they seem to be in season for what seems like quite a long time, there are always more eggs being laid.

So far I have been placing the hatchlings in a jar and abandoning it in a safe place in the wild, with some food scattered around to lure them out. That leaves me feeling satisfied that they have a good chance to grow up to fend for themselves, but it's getting a bit difficult to control now.

My problem is I'm a sucker for snails and have several times introduced new ones I've found outside, especially if they're damaged or in a dangerous place, I tend to pick them up and get attatched to them, and then want to keep them. Thankfully I've learned to stop doing this but it's hard

Perhaps if I place mating snails into a bare container with no or little substrate, I can wait for them to lay the eggs in there, where they will be easy to collect? I hate trying to collect uo scores of little hatchlings as they're so fragile and like to hide everywhere.

[coyote]

You could try a tank with no substrate, but I'd suggest using something they can't dig into, such as a damp paper towel or some moistened face cloths or something similar. That way it's easier to maintain the humidity but they can't bury eggs in it. You could also try using a very thin layer of substrate which would be harder to hide eggs in and easier to sift through.

I wouldn't use a completely bare tank, without any plants or places to climb or hide.