Leave the city to return to the countryside to raise snails
Introducing the black apple snail farm in Duy Phu commune (Duy Xuyen district, Quang Nam), Ms. Mai Thi Thu Suong (27 years old) expressed her pride and excitement with the results of more than 3 years of hard work, turning the lotus field into the "golden field" of her family.
Ms. Suong plans to expand the current 2,500m² pond to 4,000m² because the products cannot be sold quickly enough.
From an ineffective lotus pond, Ms. Suong renovated it to raise black apple snails, bringing high profits (Photo: Ngo Linh).
Sharing about the process of starting a business, Ms. Suong said that after graduating from university with a degree in philosophy, she tried many office jobs but could not stick with them for long because of her love of traveling. In the end, she decided to quit her job to find a new direction.
Following her husband back to the countryside, gradually loving the comfortable and carefree countryside atmosphere, Ms. Suong decided to plan a long-term plan to stay. Realizing that her husband's family's model of raising black apple snails combined with raising fish and growing lotus was not very effective and the economy was low, she discussed the direction of renovation.
"Without knowledge of snail farming, I packed my bags and went to the Western provinces to learn, then came back to research books and the internet, working and gaining experience," Ms. Suong recalled.
Raising a "flexible" specialty that is afraid of rain and sun, a 9X earns hundreds of millions each month (Video: Ngo Linh).
In the early days, due to lack of proper techniques, the snails were often sick, affecting productivity and not producing good offspring. Although the damage was not too great, Ms. Suong's enthusiasm in the early stages of starting her business gradually wavered.
With encouragement and support from her family, Ms. Suong gradually regained her will and determination to "conquer" the black apple snail. Step by step, she understood more about how to care for and the snail's habits, overcoming shortcomings to produce more productive offspring.
"The facility mainly supplies black apple snails and snail eggs. The number of customers is increasing, and the family will expand the area in the near future," said Ms. Suong.
Ms. Suong is also developing her own brand of clean snails, transforming them into types of grilled snails, stuffed snails, snail spring rolls, etc. to expand the market (Photo: Ngo Linh).
According to Ms. Suong, during the hot season, she invests in a pump system and a cover to cool the pond. During the rainy season, she releases fewer young snails because at this time snails do not develop well.
Snail farming is easy but not leisurely. Farmers need to monitor regularly to detect diseases in time.
The most important thing in snail farming is to keep the water source clean, avoid snails from getting diseases like swollen spout, intestinal diseases, shell erosion... If they get these diseases, the snails will not lay eggs.
Black apple snail breeding model (Photo: Ngo Linh).
In particular, snail food must be completely natural, with a source of delicious, clean food to ensure quality of the harvested snails.
Variations with snails
Currently, each month, Ms. Mai Thi Thu Suong exports to the market more than 100kg of meat snails and 500,000 snail seeds. The price of meat snails ranges from 70,000-80,000 VND/kg, and snail seeds are 300 VND/each (when they are 15 days old). Revenue from snail seeds, meat snails, snail eggs... is about 100 million VND/month (not including expenses).
On average, every 15 days, Ms. Suong releases 10,000 new breeds to restore the herd and create eggs.
"The cost of raising black apple snails is not too high. However, to have quality offspring, it is necessary to ensure the techniques of raising and hatching eggs. This job requires the breeder to be careful, closely observe the snail's appearance to prevent disease, and ensure that the offspring are clean when delivered to customers," Ms. Suong shared.
Each month, the facility supplies more than 500,000 black apple snail seeds, ensuring clean snail seeds reach customers (Photo: Ngo Linh).
Currently, the snail seeds at Ms. Suong’s farm are supplied to the markets of Da Nang, Quang Ngai and the Central Highlands provinces. To reach customers, social networks are an effective tool and Ms. Suong has made good use of it to connect businesses, consult and take care of customers in the early stages of seed release.
In particular, Ms. Suong is gradually building her own clean snail brand, including clean black apple snail products, snail sausage, snail spring rolls, smoked snails... With these products, she hopes to connect to bring them into clean food supply chains locally and in the region.
"I have brought my products to fairs to display and introduce local specialties, and received good reviews from customers. The products have also been granted food safety certificates," said Ms. Suong.
With a long-term plan to develop the snail farming profession, Ms. Suong's family has planned to build a factory to serve the incubation of snails and develop new snail meat products to serve customers, gradually diversifying product lines.
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