Egg shells have many uses in human health, cosmetics and gardening or farming.
I use egg shells in cosmetics I make and as organic calcium for body health (more details in books I am writing)
In gardening apart from using to manure soil (note: only very minimal quantity at a time) it is very useful as organic calcium supplements for snails - to strengthen their shells.
I have only few snails left - I started rearing mainly to obseve and have practical knowledge of snail farming for possible commercialisation in future.
I was keeping them in baskets but I noticed they were not getting as big as expected - I was feeding them mainly with fruit and vegetable remnants and leaves from my garden like potato, cocoyam, okra leaves.
I also give them soya bean chaff and egg shell powder. Sometimes I give solid carbs like plantain and the solid potatoes.
They would eat whatever is given them but would stop eating and there would be leftovers. I would wait for them to eat the leftovers but they wouldn't.
Then I would have to remove the leftovers, clean the baskets and put in fresh food supplies and water.
But still they were not growing fast enough. But I observed that at a time, some small ones escaped and for over a month or so I didn't see them.
When I was clearing a portion of the garden to remove worn out sacks and put the soil in new sacks, I recaptured some of the snails- they had fared better while they were roaming free in the garden - they grew considerably bigger.
I put them back in the cage so I can feed them directly. I didn't replenish stock by buying new snails but kept observing the few.
Their growth while caged was slow compared to when they were roaming free, so I have decided to allow them roam free in that section of the garden that is somewhat dense.
I put them in the biggest sack. I know they may not stay there but they can return there at any time.
Since they may not be able to source calcium by themselves, what I just do now is put eggshells or the powder in some sacks so that while roaming free they can find calcium supplements for their shells to develop. The eggshell powder is preferable as they can easily ingest it.
Why do you think snails fare better while roaming free than when caged and given food and water?
It reminds me of students in boarding school - they usually lose some weight while in boarding house compared to when they are day -students. In boarding house, their food rations are controlled but in many homes youngsters can eat as much as they want at their parents or guardians' expense.
So these snails apparently prefer to roam around the dense part of my garden and eat whatever they like.
I rear the light brown ones that can grow very big - not those small dark brown ones that are everywhere when it's wet but cannot grow really big - when I see those, I throw them away from my garden.
So if you want to raise snails to big size, keeping them caged in containers wouldn't work - provide enough space with vegetation - grow what they love- apart from fresh vegs, they particularly love the leaves of sweet carbohydrate plants.
If you plant maize, within the garden, they may eat the leaves. You may also put some plantains, banana, potato, tomato, cucumber and watermelon residues around there- cut them open so the snails can eat the succulent inner part.
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