Can Beef Cattle Be Secured With and Electric Fence?
Cavan farmer Peter Monaghan is arguably making more on one acre of footing than most farmers are making on a price-per-acre basis equally he's bagging over €4.50/kg for snails*.
e's producing 1.2m native Irish Hélix Aspersa Muller (Petit Gris) snails a year, which amounts to around 10t and is selling them wholesale to Greece.
Peter, who grew upward on a pocket-size 20ac belongings in Lisduff, Virginia, Cavan, wanted to add value to the family subcontract so after looking at his options he decided to try his manus at snail farming.
"I've always been a scrap of a habitation bird and started to build my own house here, 20 yards from the farm when I was but 17," says Peter, a former transport director.
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Some of the snails at Inis Escargot. Photos by Lorraine Teevan
"My father passed away when I was 21 then I became fifty-fifty more involved in the farm and after a few years I decided I wanted to change our farming system.
"Dad was ever interested in good 'milky' cows only I decided to requite other more muscly breeds, like Belgium Blues a become.
"I tried them for a couple of years and plant that I got the best money selling them as weanlings, before they'd reach 350kg. If I kept them until they were over 400kg I was withal getting the aforementioned toll for them, so it didn't make sense to hold on to them for any longer than information technology took for them to get near the 350kg marking," says Peter, who averaged between €four.75 - €5.15/kg for his weanlings terminal twelvemonth.
In a bid to all-time utilise the country he had and add further value, Peter looked into other alternative farming practices, before settling on snail farming, which he first thought was "too good to be true."
"I did loads of enquiry and originally idea about getting into worm farming, but the investment was quite high, and it seemed to take too many pitfalls, so I decided against it.
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Peter Monaghan in the snail nursery
"Snail farming seemed to tick all the boxes. Every farming system or concern has its pros and cons, and I tried hard to find the cons in snail farming, only I honestly couldn't notice any," he says. "Information technology seemed also good to exist true."
Peter gathered as much noesis every bit he could about snail farming and did a private course also as a Teagasc course before ordering 700,000 infant snails from a snail farm in Carlow in 2017.
"I knew I could do all the inquiry in the world, but I'd never properly learn until I tried it for myself," he says.
V years on, Peter is producing 1.2m snails a year which amounts to around 10t.
To become started, Peter erected a 6x30ft polytunnel and fix 20 tables, each for 40,000 snails, and planted them with forage rape for snail feed and breeding ground. He added a feeding table to the superlative of each where he could besprinkle a calcium-rich, high-free energy snail nutrient and covered them with a "mantle" netting. He has since erected a larger polytunnel to cater for his growing numbers.
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Peter Monaghan is producing more than a million snails per year
"I planted the forage rape in March and the snails arrived in Apr. The forage rape is much like rape seed.
"The snails stay in the first polytunnel from April until the cease of May. Every evening when the sun goes downwardly, I go into the tunnel and 'mist' it with water, spraying a very light sprinkle of water all over it," says Peter.
"It's truly amazing, the minute the water starts to softly fall, you tin hear the snails coming out to feed."
Peter's snails are then moved to the field which is an acre of ground, planted with more forage rape and enclosed past galvanised steel which goes down a human foot into the ground, to keep the snails in and the predators out. They stay there until September.
The area is farther secured by a blazon of 'wind-breaker' netting as well equally a iv-strand electric argue which doesn't damage the snails but gives off enough of a shock to stop them escaping their parameters.
"I've divided the field into 10 paddocks, each holding well-nigh 100,000 snails. Each of the paddocks take feeding boards and I feed the snails betwixt fifty-75kg of feed per night," says Peter.
"Effectually 8pm or 9pm, the sprinklers in the field come on and the snails instantly come out to feed. It actually is an astonishing sight."
At the end of September, the snail harvest begins at Inis Escargot, and information technology lasts for around six weeks.
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Peter says the ideal weight for a snail is 10-12g
"I harvest the snails in buckets. It takes xxx or 40 minutes to make full a 15kg bucket of snails," says Peter.
"The platonic weight for a snail is ten-12g. It's just like getting a cow ready for the mart or factory, they need to achieve a sure weight just not get over it either."
Once the snails are collected from the field they are brought to another polytunnel with "purging tables" inside.
"The snails are put on the purging tables and left there without food or water for vii-10 days. During this fourth dimension they volition clean themselves out and dry and their bodies will be tricked into going back into hibernation," says Peter.
"Once they are asleep, they are ready to be bagged in 7kg netted bags, similar to those used for onions and they can be transported anywhere in the earth then."
So far, Peter has been concentrating on selling his snails wholesale and even though the coin is good, he says he would "quadruple" his profit if he was to begin supplying direct.
"The lorry comes and collects the snails and takes them to Hellenic republic to the processing plant. They never wake from hibernation and they're processed by existence put into water which gradually heats to boiling point.
"Information technology's been shown to exist a very humane manner of killing them equally they don't experience whatsoever pain.
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Baby snails at Inis Escargot
"Selling wholesale, y'all'll go over €4.l/kg for snails at the moment, depending on quality and y'all'd hands quadruple that if you lot were to sell directly to restaurants.
"I just haven't put the fourth dimension and effort into that avenue however but it's something I will explore in the near futurity."
Peter says that when he was starting up, there was very piffling data on snail farming bachelor in Republic of ireland, and so he had to gather most of his enquiry from Europe, even travelling to Spain.
He has at present decided to open upwards his farm every bit a one-of-a-kind preparation facility for others interested in inbound snail farming.
"I'chiliad opening upward a new grooming facility right in the middle of the farm where I'll be providing consultations from June to September.
"People can come and run across the snails, the polytunnels, the field and enquire the practical questions," says Peter.
"I didn't take anyone to inquire for advice when I was starting out and I had so many questions, from what I should be feeding them to what type of wire I needed.
"At present I'll be able to help others who want to diversify in the same way I did. I'm already one-half booked up and I've a lot more enquiries coming in because I think people are starting time to realise just how proficient snail farming can be."
Farm diversification: Peter Monaghan
What level of starting time-up costs did y'all incur in setting up the business organisation?
Depending on how big y'all want to start off, it will cost betwixt €5,000 - €15,000. It should exist a once off payment which should be paid back by the end of twelvemonth one.
I never took out a loan or relied on whatsoever financing but business organization loans are bachelor for beginning-ups. I'd recommend starting on half an acre the outset twelvemonth and taking it from there.
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Peter is selling wholesale to Hellenic republic at the moment
How long did it take to get the business upward and running?
It only took a few months. Farmers are generally pretty handy and then getting the expanse set isn't and then difficult.
Was there any grant aid available?
No, the simply matter I applied for was a feasibility study through Leader but I was refused it on the grounds that the snails weren't being processed here on the subcontract. There's a major lack of funding in this expanse but I wouldn't let that put anyone off entering the sector because there's great money to be made.
Did you discover any bodies helpful when starting up?
Absolutely not. There was literally nowhere to plow on the island of Ireland. I emailed the Department, looked into grants and other bodies but could find no help as nobody had cognition of the sector within Ireland.
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Peter says he would like to aggrandize into the eating place business concern in the hereafter
Where is your marketplace?
I'grand selling wholesale to a processor in Hellenic republic. They supply the snails in two forms to their distributors, with the shell and without. Snails are a delicacy in various parts of the globe and huge pigsty of demand for them will never be filled, as far as I tin can see. The demand goes way above what the world is currently producing.
Supplying to restaurants is a very assisting avenue. Information technology takes time only I'd quadruple what I'm making now if I went down that path, and I'm already making practiced money. It's something I'm going to wait into only I simply haven't had the fourth dimension yet.
*This article was updated on April 27 to change the price per kg from €450 to €4.50/kg.
Source: https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/agri-business/how-this-cavan-farmer-is-bagging-a-profit-on-snails-41586833.html
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