"I suppose it sounds bizarre as it’s not every day you wake up and say to your husband, ‘Let’s be snail farmers’,"
Most dedicated gardeners wince at the sight of a snail in their midst, but not Sonya Begg.
When she saw there was a food source literally at her feet in her backyard, she quit hairdressing to farm the free-range molluscs.
"And the thought of free-range snails conjures up all sorts of images, but they are just your average garden variety of snail."
Her snails graze only on the best produce before fetching more than $2 each in trendy Sydney restaurants.
Mrs Begg has designed netted pens, similar to those on Italian farms, where they feed on hybrid turnips, silver beet and clover.
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Last year, she bred 25,000 snails which where sold to restaurants in Sydney and Orange and to distributors in Brisbane and Canberra.
The snails fetched $9.50 per dozen and Mrs Begg hopes to step up production next year and hit the 100,000 mark.
