Are your adult Margies captive bred?

[jayne]

I was thinking, dangerous I know about margies yesterday.

My four are all wild caught and have laid three batches of eggs in 6 weeks which would suggest they are fairly easy to breed,but I don't think I've ever seen any adult captive bred margies for sale.

Is it because raising the babies to adulthood is difficult,so not many captive babies survive?

I'm sure that people will always want to rescue Brixton snails, which is great, two of mine were saved from the pot last year, but it would be great if we could cut down on the number of wild caught snails being imported for the pet trade if possible.

Would you pay extra for a large,healthy captive bred adult if it meant one less wild caught snail (again excluding Brixton babies)

I'm probably waffling as usual, but hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say

[sezzy5889]

I think its just the fact people keep their captive breds, because wild caughts can be readily available by import, you can get them easily, but with captives, it takes you years to get them to adulthood and people just prefere to keep them, there aren't a lot i don't think, but many people have them :-)

I have 2 captive bred jeuveniles myself about 8cm shell length

I think buying wild caught margies will decrease as more cb ones become available, but that won't happen unless people get wc to begin with

[deadmansfinger]

I said similar in another thread regarding WC Lignus. Ideally we will get enough CB baby Lignus to meet the demand and so wont have to get anymore imported.
I have 8 WC margies (from Brixton) and 2 CB margies all ranging from 15-18cm.
I don't know if they are hard to raise from young but I got my 2 margies when they were tiny but I can't speak for everyone's experiences.

The Brixton snails will be there whether we rescue some or not. There is obviously a demand for them for food.

I would prefer CB personally but it's not always possible and to get these someone has to start with the WC ones in the first place but I understand what you mean and in an ideal world we would have sufficient CB specimens to meet the demand but it's a long slow process.

Brian.

[Paul]

My 3 adult marginata var. ovum are all captive bred, though I bought them at adult size.

I don't think margies are difficult to breed, but the eggs are trickier to hatch a full clutch because of their sensitivity to environmental change. Also, they lay only a handful of eggs, usually twice in succession. But judging by all the success in recent weeks, probably due to the amount of people who have margies now, thanks to Brixton probably, I don't think they'll be difficult to get hold of.

I also think that Archachatina are more seasonal when they lay, so babies are probably restricted to a few times in a year, whereas Achatina lay arbitrarily.

[felix93]

I have 12 margies and 7 of them are CB (not including all the CB babies I hatched), shell size ranging from 3cm - 17cm. 4 of the CB are juvenilles but the one I bought from one of the members seems not growing as it probably has grown just about 1 - 2 mm since I got him 2/3 months ago. The rest of the juvenilles are growing steadily. The other 3 adults CB are bred by my best friend and they have already laid a few batches of eggs. So I don't know if they are hard to raise from babies to adulthood or not. I only raise them since they're juvenilles.

Regarding Brixton margies, they are just the same as the Chinese from China eat cats and dogs thing, French eat escagots and frog legs etc. There's a market for people to buy as food.

I personally don't mind if the margies are WC or CB. If I can save one more WC from the pot, I will. I don't think I will pay a lot more for a large CB though if both WC & CB are both healthy.

[LisaLQ]

Kathy's Sherman is captive bred, he's gorgeous. My two adults are Brixtons, my 7-8cm (guess) suturalis x ovum is captive bred, as are the two suturalis I have (one mine, one Kathy's). I've found the trickiest are my wild caughts, my youngsters are all growing well and are greedy monsters, as are my wild caughts now - but they seem to be rather sensitive to change.

As for my eggs, I did nothing special with them, stuck them in a tupperware box with the moss they were in already, put one corner of it over a small heat mat, and left them. And so far, we have 9 out of the batch of 11 hatch, and 3 out of the batch of 13. They've not finished yet by the looks of things.

I may be jumping the gun though, they're only newly born and apparently little babies can be tricky to raise.

Edited to add - doh @ me, I said 2 adults, when I really have 3 Boo is captive bred too.

Edited again - I really am brain dead today. I meant Boo was wild caught.

[Deleted]

i got 2 adult captive bred margies, and they had a baby. theyre not hard to breed. its probably just because theres more wild caught margies available for anyone that wants a margie.

[eric2]

I have 2 captive bred Suturalis adults reared from babies

[ian]

I have one of each, i got the captive bred one as an adult from 'fatslug' who is occasionally on the forum.

[jayne]

There's obviously more captive bred stock around than I thought which is great .

I'm guessing that maybe it's only in recent times that people have had breeding success and so hopefully over time more and more captive bred margies will be available.

As a hobby, snail keeping is, I should imagine, relatively new, especially with types other than Fulica.So we have little option but to buy wild caught stock at the moment,although in time if the hobby is taken up by more and more people then it will be more like keeping reptiles or tropical fish where the majority of available stock seems to be captive bred.

I suppose then we'll just have to make sure that not too much inbreeding goes on within the stock available,but as there will always be Brixton then there will always be wild caught margies and tigers available to provide new blood lines.Maybe we could have some sort of an exchange where people can swop captive bred snails with people who own some of a different blood line

It's a subject close to my heart as we own a marine aquatic shop and in recent years more and more people are successfully breeding their fish and/or propagating their corals. We sell several different captive bred animals now which has to be good doesn't it

[Ruth]

Whilst removing animals from their natural habitat for the pet trade is not something i agree with, I do think that margies are kind of an exception to the rule because, as Brian said, they will be at Brixton irrespective of whether we buy them for pets or not because there is a demand for them as food. That said, I’ve previously wondered whether by 'rescuing' them from the pot we are inadvertently fuelling the trade. That is, do you think the sellers order lots of shipments throughout the summer to meet the demand (in which case we might actually be leading to increased numbers being taken out of the wild) or do they get one big order at the beginning of summer and just wait until thy have either been sold or died (meaning we are truly saving them)?

[sezzy5889]

I don't know whether its just Brixton that sell them in the Uk, but tigers for one are sold in France on markets as i've seen, healthy ones too but for food, you don't hear of people buying them there but they still order them so there must be a demand for them as food.

[Arno]

I don't think us buying snails at Brixton market increases the trade.The way I understand it they get one big shipment in somewhere in July.Then another one somewhere in August.When the snails are sold out they are gone,simple as that.Even if we buy 100 or more Margies they still wont get an extra shipment in.The people selling them are not that smart at trading.I mean if they were, they could easily charge us double for the snails and we still be happy to pay that.

[Ruth]

I thought that they might get just one big shipment based on Anjie saying that the health of the snails worsens towards the end of the season. I intend, as a lot of others have mentioned, to go this summer and rescue a couple (or 10 ) so its nice to know that we will be saving them from a horrific death and not just fuelling the trade. It will break my heart when i have to leave some there but i suppose you just have to accept that you can't rescue them all

[sezzy5889]

Don't worry you are just leaving some behind for the next one of us to go get, hehe ;D