Diseases and Pests
Good hygiene can prevent the spread of disease and otherwise improve the health and growth rate of snails. Food is replaced daily in order to prevent spoilage. Earthworms added to the soil help keep the pen clean.
Parasites, nematodes, trematodes, fungi, and microarthropods can attack snails, and such problems can spread rapidly when snail populations are dense. The bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa causes intestinal infections that can spread rapidly in a crowded snail pen.
Possible predators include rats, mice, moles, skunks, weasels, birds, frogs and toads, lizards, walking insects (e.g., some beetle and cricket varieties), some types of flies, centipedes, and even certain carnivorous snail species, such as Strangesta capillacea.
Read more about this topic: Heliciculture
Famous quotes containing the words diseases and/or pests:
“But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two stools.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“How we love sequestering, where no pests are pestering.”
—Lorenz Hart (1895–1943)