Grove Snails

Cepaea nemoralis

Grove snails, also known as Brown-Lipped Snails, or Lemon snails, are land snails native to Europe, where they are extremely widespread. They have been introduced in the United States, and Canada.

They have very beautiful shells that come in a range of colors and banding patterns, that typically grow to a bit under an inch in diameter.

These snails are known to be slow-growing, though may live up to 7 years.

Care

Diet

Grove Snails are herbivores and scavengers. In captivity, they enjoy fresh vegetables like carrots, zucchini, bell peppers, pumpkin, and spinach. Old veggies should be changed out for fresh ones every couple days. Some foods to be avoided are onions, garlic, and salted food. They should be given a source of protein once a week, this can be achieved by feeding fish food that has around 40% crude protein content.

Snails must be provided with constant access to a source of calcium. Good sources for this are cuttlebone and eggshells.

Enclosure

1 gallon of space per adult snail is our recommended minimum, though they greatly enjoy having more space.

Inside the enclosure, items including leaf litter, artificial foliage, terracotta pots, cork bark make good decorations for the snails to climb on and explore. Live plants are often not recommended, as the snails will eat the leaves and likely kill any plants added.

Provide at least 3 inches of coco fiber or organic topsoil substrate. They will dig into the substrate to lay their eggs. Substrate also helps to hold moisture in an enclosure. Their enclosure should be misted at regular intervals to maintain humidity. If the enclosure seems to dry out quickly, covering some of the ventilation with plastic wrap can help.

Snails poop a lot! We recommend adding a clean up crew of springtails. Isopods are not recommended, as they may disturb and chew on snails. If you want to add isopods in with snails, white dwarf isopods are likely to be the least disruptive to the snails.

Social

Grove snails are best Kept with at least one other grove snail. Unlike a lot other herbivorous snails, they should not be kept with other species of snail. This is because they are known to rasp (chew) on the shells of other snails, which is damaging.

Crushing Eggs

This is absolutely necessary step in keeping snails. Snails, including grove snails, are hermaphrodites. Though grove snails need to mate, any two snails can do so and produce offspring.

Every week, Dig through the soil to search for eggs that may have been laid. Eggs are small, round, and off-white in appearance. They are laid in clutches of varying sizes, but are typically at least 20. If you find eggs, you can dispose of them either by crushing, or freezing them. Failure to do this will result in too many baby snails!

If you acquire your grove snails from us, they are siblings from the same clutch. We highly discourage breeding these pairs to each other, in order to preserve the genetics of the captive-bred snail population.

Written by Fern - 2/13/24

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