THE VARIED ROLES OF SNAILS - National Universities Commission

Snail meat can also serve as salt water fish baits. In the
U.S. the raw flesh of the Philippine pond snail Pila
luzonica is used as a bait for line fishing.
Snails can be used for poultry feed. Small living snails
were experimentally given to chickens with no success.
They would occasionally pick at them. But Van Weel
(1948) found that chickens would not reject well crushed
snails but that they would not take to them as avidly as
ducks invariably do. Other studies insist that chicken ate
snails raw, boiled or roasted, but seem to prefer them
crushed and boiled. In the Dominican islands, the freshly
killed endemic snails are pounded with corn meal before
they are fed to the chicken. The general consensus is that
chicken and ducks accept snails when crushed and boiled.
Another method which showed increased acceptability is
that a portion of the snail shells were ground up and
combined with snail meal as an added source of calcium
carbonate. In the proper proportion, it would obviate the
necessity of using oyster shell or other sources of bone
meal.
Snails are also used in feeding livestock and they are
incorporated in the daily rations of pigs. Experiments show
that pigs eat snails live, boiled or chopped. The general
agreement is to boil and de-shell the snails before feeding
the pigs with them.
Snail meals can be produced and used as fertilizers or as
supplemental feeds. In both cases it would be desirable to
dehydrate the snails and reduce them to a powder or meal.
In this form, it could be stored and used when needed either
as a fertilizer or as feed supplement. The value of snail
meal is in the high percentages of phosphates and lysine.
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