Releasing baby snails

[eibhlin]

I've been looking around to find any info. Again without results lol. There seriously is waaaay to little info out there about snails...

My baby's (Cepaea n. and Helix aspersa) are still to tiny to release but i have been wondering about what size would be good to let them into the wild? I want to keep a few of the cepaea but i would like to see their shell color so i can choose. But so far they are still all beige and slightly see trough. I also haven't found ANY info on when their shell color starts to appear.

It's also mid summer here (not really a warm summer) and it's usually quite nice till mid/end September. I've read that eggs beings laid around autumn usually don't survive. So i was wondering if anyone knows what the max. date would be to release them? I live in Belgium, probably no that much different climate as most people on here in the UK.

Oh and: because there are so many of them. I'm planning to release a few in my garden but most in the near by forest. There they are safe from cars and people with plenty of food.

[picklepies]

Heya, whilst eggs hatched in autumn don't have a good survival rate, it sounds like you're were hatches recently in summer so as long s they're able to adjust to the seasonal temperature changes whilst inside they should be fine to be raised in autumn time as long as they don't go from a fully heated house to snow I'm afraid I don't know the exact time period for when their colours start to come in, but they should be noticeable by end of august/beginning of September, when there will still be time to release them before the weather gets too cold so they have time to acclimatise before hibernating for the winter hope this helps a little, sorry for the long post!

[eibhlin]

They are in my living room at the moment and the window is open all day. So they are often in the same temp as outside kinda. Maybe a week or 2 before releasing i can put them outside during a part of the day and take them in at night.

[GrandTouringShell]

Jul 30, 2016 20:49:40 GMT eibhlin said:

They are in my living room at the moment and the window is open all day. So they are often in the same temp as outside kinda. Maybe a week or 2 before releasing i can put them outside during a part of the day and take them in at night.

No need to do that. They'll do fine as long as they're reasonably large enough (Maybe 1-2 cm?)  and released in advanced before winter. 

[eibhlin]

Ok thaks! Winter like in really cold weather only starts around november usually. The winters aren't as cold as they used to be. We didn't even get snow last year.