How To Check Whether Your Snails Laid Eggs?

I found my snails laid eggs again on last weekend. I think it may be a good opportunity to write about how to check whether your pet snails laid eggs, and what should you do if you don't want to keep the eggs.

Giant African Land Snails lay eggs 3-4 times a year (though I heard some snails lay eggs every a few weeks if given the chance!). It's easy to spot eggs if your snail's container is made of glass or transparent plastic. By holding the container up, you can see eggs from the bottom of the container. Make sure you check it at least once every few days.

You can clearly see two patches of eggs from the bottom of my snail tank (I think they were laid by two snails):

Here is a close-up photos. Each egg is about 3mm or 4mm diameter. I didn't count how many eggs there are, but it looks like more than 50.

Because African Land Snails are "invading species" in the UK, it is illegal to release them in the environment. I feel sorry for these little guys, but I had to freeze them. It is recommended to freeze for a couple of days, but I normally freeze for one week just in case. Please make sure you freeze eggs as early as possible, definitely not just before or when they are hatching! This is why I said you should check at least once every few days.

I removed the eggs with a spoon, and then put them in a takeaway box. I feel sorry but they were put in the freezer after I took this photo:

However, if you would like to breed them, you should gentle take them out with a spoon because adult snails can squash them by accident. Prepare a takeaway box with some coconut soil as bedding. Don't forget to pierce some air holes on the lid. Then carefully place the eggs in the takeaway box. Spray some water in the box a few times a day, making sure the humidity is high in the box. Then you can relax and wait! In a few days or weeks, you will have a lot snail babies! :D

I only bred my snails once because I wanted to learn life cycle of snails. I ended up with 54 baby snails...

New born baby snails: