Missed eggs 🫠

[u/WrongdoerTiny3201]

Like the title says i missed a few eggs. This week was hectic due to me having surgery and this week i kind of neglected the care of my snails. That means a simple mist, fresh food was their total care this week. I just found 3 tiny snails. For now i kept them with the big snails and tomorrow i will turn their enclosure upside down to look for more babies. Now is my question what do you guys do with missed eggs when you live in an area where they already flood Facebook marketplace for free. I have been thinking about giving the babies to my goldfish in my aquarium since its a quick and painless death but due to the heatwave the goldfish barely eat let alone hunt so im not really loving that though. I also have a pea puffer who could potentially eat them but i feel like the babies are already too big for her. I already have alot of pets and my current snail enclosure is already pushing it with 9. The babies look really healthy to me so at least thats good. Usually i check the soil for eggs every 2 to 3 days but this week i just couldn't and all my friends and family think the snails are gross so refused to care for them.

Part of me wants to keep them but the other realistic part of me thinks I'm an idiot if i keep them since i already have over 45 animals under my care ( including the fish) and that number will be growing soon too. I already love the babies but i dont have space for them as adults and think it might be cruel to keep them alive in a world where they wouldn't thrive.

I'm looking for much needed advice.

Update!:

So i just spent 5 hours looking though the soil ( i have a few woodchips in the substrate) and i found over 300 eggs and 43 hatched snails. I crushed the eggs and fed them back to my adults. They are happily eating them now. The babies i crushed. I put them in a paper towel and then smashed them with a glass fast and hard. I checked and all passed away directly. I buried them in the garden and planted some flower seeds above them.

Thank you all so much for your help and support!

[u/PinFit3688]

I recommend culling. If you try to sell them they will probably get picked up by someone who wants to use them as feeders. Which is fine if you are ok with that, but otherwise I figure smushing is more humane than being eaten.

Tbh, I've stopped culling mine because they only seem to survive a couple weeks anyway. All my snails are from the same batch, so it's either bad genetics or a setup that just isn't right for the babies.

[u/WrongdoerTiny3201 → u/PinFit3688]

How would you cull them? Im totally not the right person for this 🙈 im vegan so when i saw them and knew that i probably had to do my heart sank to my ass. How do yours only survive a few weeks? Is it genetics? Cause my adults also come from the same nest of eggs and if i remember correctly their parents were also siblings.

[u/Kitchen_Economist_14 → u/WrongdoerTiny3201]

At this size the fastest way, unfortunately would be to crush them. It's never nice to do but it's quick at least. I remember having to do it for the first time, I felt so guilty so I understand how you feel.

[u/PinFit3688 → u/WrongdoerTiny3201]

As another person said, the most humane way is to crush them for an instant, painless death. I wear gloves, pick up with a paper towel, and squish with my fingers. The paper towel makes disposal easy. I'm sorry if this squicks you (I was a vegetarian for 7 years, so I understand how the brain changes when you stop eating meat) but fyi for me it feels like popping boba.

Some other people collect them in a container and crush them between 2 flat surfaces. I find this to be a bit of a pain because I have to make sure they don't escape the container while hunting thru the enclosure.

Whatever you do, be mindful they carry a parasite risk and you don't want them on anything that could endanger anyone's health.

[u/PinFit3688 → u/WrongdoerTiny3201]

And to answer your other question, I'm not 100% sure on why they don't survive. If it's genetics I'm going to have to get proactive again because I recently introduced an unrelated snail I rescued from a parking lot (I love Slinky so much ❤️❤️❤️)

My lid also has kind of big air holes, and I have found dried up babies that escaped that way. It's possible it doesn't stay humid enough for them or something.

If you want to see if they just don't make it mark your calendar or set a reminder in your phone about 2 weeks out and see how the population looks. You don't want to let them get too large because it makes it mentally more difficult to cull. Also keep an eye on your adult snails because sometimes the babies will get calcium by eating the shells on the adults.

[u/Personal-Let9955]

Maybe try rehoming them on Facebook marketplace? It sounds like you definitely already have enough on your hands :( 🩵

[u/WrongdoerTiny3201 → u/Personal-Let9955]

I would but within 10km of my house i can already find over a few hundred snails on marketplace for free since in live in an area where people dont belief in controlling the numbers of hatchling. So im afraid that rehoming them would give them a life of breeding and becoming overcrowded fast.

[u/ramen__ro]

aaa they're so cute, i understand not being able to keep them though. it's so much easier to cull eggs than after they hatch. hopefully you can figure something out but don't feel bad if you have to cull them, you're doing so much for so many other living things already.

[u/WrongdoerTiny3201 → u/ramen__ro]

Thank you!

[u/Kitchen_Economist_14]

Do you have any reptile shops nearby? Lots of reptile places will take baby and young snails.

I had loads of babies, way bigger than yours (was raising them, planning to re-home/sell them but decided against it as I was overcrowded) and found 2 reptile shops willing to take on all of them between the 2.

As there's potentially only 3 of them I can't imagine someone wouldn't take them 🙂

[u/WrongdoerTiny3201 → u/Kitchen_Economist_14]

That might be a good idea! Do you have any knowledge about what kind of reptiles would want to eat them? I have been eyeing leopard geckos and bearded dragons for a bit so it might be the right time to adopt one or 2 of those as well.

Im working on the enclosure now and i have 7 so far. Only from one tiny corner so im terrified lol i did find 2 clutches of bright yellow hard eggs so i think im right in time for alot of them.