Snails?

[Tygerr]

I've heard that chameleons might eat snails, and that if they did they would provide a good source of calcium (since the shells are almost pure calcium).

Has anyone ever used snails as a feeder? And if so, how do you go about gutloading them? Is there any information about what sort of nutritional values they provide?

 

[Zerah Morris]

Most resources will advise you to stay away from snails. While you are correct they should provide a different set of nutritional vitamins and minerals, they often carry very high parasite levels. It seems not worth the risk involved.

 

[podenbeck]

Snails are bad bad news they are a vector for many parasites.

 

[wow]

what abought cb snails like the stuff they feed to people

 

[podenbeck]

I still think its a bad idea. They could easily pick something up in the culturing. The bad part is that many of the lifecycles of snail parasites can have intermediate hosts. I don't know of many but there are some parasites of humans can pick up. A parasitite of the Ramshorn Snail for instance is causing frogs in the US to have multiple limbs. I think when it comes to poikiltherms I would just not risk it.