Biologists classify leeches as a type of annelids. The length of the medicinal leech is about 12 cm, it is armed with 270 teeth located on 3 jaws, and has 5 pairs of eyes. It feeds on the blood of animals and humans. She can remain without food for six months, and then suck 7 times more blood than she weighs. Although there are known cases of leeches surviving without food for 2 years!

Leeches are used to treat many diseases. In the USA they are used in ophthalmology and plastic surgery, where up to 45 thousand leeches are used per year. To treat various diseases, specimens of different sizes are used. In ophthalmology, for example, small leeches are used. Europe consumes up to 120 thousand leeches annually. In Russia, treatment with leeches ( hirudotherapy) has become very fashionable. The price of leeches ranges from 30-50 rubles. In the CIS countries, an increasing number of people are currently showing interest in treatment with leeches. And demand began to significantly exceed supply. Therefore, it makes sense to seriously think about such a business idea as growing medicinal leeches.

You can buy medical leeches for cultivation at biofactories. The largest and strongest individuals are selected for reproduction. They are fed and grown, and then placed in 3-liter jars, several at a time, left alone for 2 months. Each leech can bear offspring because it is a hermaphrodite, that is, for its children it will be “both mom and dad.” If it shows signs of having offspring, it is sent to be stocked - transplanted into a jar of peat. There, one leech lays from 2 to 10 cocoons: it secretes foam, which, slightly hardening, forms these same cocoons. Future offspring develop in them. Young leeches are fed sterile calf blood heated to a temperature of 36 degrees. Special drums are used for feeding. The film stretched over them imitates human skin. The leeches cut through it, gradually becoming saturated. They eat a lot, increasing significantly in size. They are then washed with clean water. Before being sent to pharmacies, leeches are not fed for 3-4 months and sent for sale.

This is a serious business based on a very promising idea. Work on the farm is mostly done by hand. Lighting, water and air temperature, air humidity, and ventilation are of great importance for success. Such a farm pays for itself within 5 years. It is also necessary to obtain a license for this production and all kinds of permits from regulatory authorities. Upon receipt of the pharmacy chain, a certificate is issued for each batch of leeches. The demand for leeches is quite high, so this business niche is very promising. There is a black market for medicinal leeches, and it has arisen due to the difficulty of legalizing small-scale leech farms.

Video: growing leeches

In the first half of the 19th century. Due to increased predatory fishing, medicinal leeches have practically disappeared from water bodies. As a result, artificial breeding of medicinal worms - leech breeding - became widespread.

Leeches were bred both in artisanal conditions and on an industrial scale. Entire farms for breeding worms were created, which were in great demand in hospitals and clinics, as well as in educational institutions with medical and zoological departments and faculties. At that time, leeches were bred in ordinary open-air ponds.

Currently, medical worms are bred in special laboratory farms that have artificial reservoirs (concrete pools with stepped walls or ponds) that imitate the natural habitat of the worms.

The main requirement for water containing leeches is its purity.

Reservoirs should be well lit by the sun; piles of stones are laid out at their bottom, which leeches use as houses.

Medical leeches are fed with large clots of fresh blood, which is purchased from slaughterhouses. In this case, the blood of only healthy animals (mainly large and small cattle, as well as pigs) is collected.

After the leeches reach a certain weight (1.5-2 g), they are no longer fed in order to make them suitable for medical procedures. Some individuals are used for reproduction.

Artificially grown leeches develop much faster than those found in natural conditions, and are in no way inferior to them in terms of quality indicators. In ordinary reservoirs, leeches grow to a “medicinal” state only 3 years after they emerge from the cocoon. In commercial farms this period is reduced to 1 - 1.5 years. In the 1920s The world's first bdellological laboratory was created in Russia. As a result of numerous studies, a system of rules for breeding, keeping, storing and transporting leeches was developed.

Leeches that have reached the reproductive state and the required size are called queens.

After the mating season, which lasts for about 1 month, the leeches are placed in queen cells. The queen cell is a terrarium container in which natural conditions are imitated, combining the presence of land and water. The bottom of the queen cell is lined with moist peat soil, on which moss turf is laid to help regulate its moisture. Leeches first dig a shallow hole in the soil that is on land and lay a cocoon with eggs in it. After some time, the cocoons are transferred from the queen cells to the water. From the eggs, filaments of small young leeches subsequently develop, the length of which is only 7-8 mm, and the weight is about 0.03 g. The filaments, like adult individuals, are fed with fresh animal blood.

In the cold season, worms are transferred to winter storage in cool rooms. To do this, they are placed in containers containing a moistened mixture of peat and soil.

The top of the container with leeches is covered with a clean cloth and tied.

During this period, leeches burrow into the ground and fall into torpor until spring. If necessary, they are removed from the container and placed in a warm environment, after which the worms are quickly activated and become suitable for use in medical procedures.

To keep leeches, use only clean containers that have been thoroughly washed beforehand. During the storage of leeches, the water in the container must be changed periodically. In this case, the leeches are not removed. During the process of changing the water and cleaning the container, you should also carefully wash the leeches, as they are susceptible to molting. If this is not done, then the old shell (cuticle) can over time tighten the leech and lead to disruption of its blood circulation.

In addition, the inner surface of the container should be cleaned of mucus secreted by leeches. Water with leeches floating in it can be carefully poured into another vessel. The main container must be rinsed and filled with clean water. After this, the leeches are carefully returned to their place. At the end of the procedure, the container is covered with cloth and tied tightly.

With a conservation approach, the main condition for preserving the healing properties of leeches is high-quality water, preferably from a natural reservoir. Boiled or distilled water cannot be used. Tap water, before placing leeches in it, should first be allowed to settle and then passed through special purifying filters.

Another important condition for proper conservation storage is maintaining the required temperature and lighting of the environment in which the leeches are placed. The optimal temperature is room temperature. Lack of heat, as well as its excess, negatively affect the condition of leeches.

Since leeches are amphibians and often crawl out of the water, clean air is of great importance for their maintenance. Therefore, in the rooms where they are located, odors of perfumes, medications, tobacco, chemical mixtures, etc. are unacceptable. It is necessary to regularly ventilate their storage areas.

Lighting should be sufficient, but not direct sunlight or artificial.

All institutions involved in the production and storage of leeches practice their daily inspection. If unhealthy individuals are detected, appropriate measures are immediately taken to prevent the spread of the disease. Sick and dead leeches are removed from the container in which they were stored, and the container itself is sanitized. When processing, you cannot use chemical disinfectants, since impurities in the water (even in a very small concentration) can negatively affect the condition of the leeches. Therefore, hot water and heat treatment are mainly used.

Sick individuals in research institutions are used to develop methods for treating leech diseases, of which many have been discovered to date.

Leeches tolerate transportation quite well by cars, trains and even planes. To transport leeches, they are placed in a bag with moistened peat soil, which is placed in any container convenient for transportation.

The Russian “leech” market is quiet and smooth, like the surface of a lake. Demand consistently outpaces supply, the selling price of the product promises to only increase in the coming years (in Russia, leech is now 6-10 times cheaper than in Western Europe), and there are only four official manufacturers. Add to this the relatively low entry barrier, and you can only wonder why new players are not rushing into the niche.

In Russia, leeches have long enjoyed unquestioned authority. In the 19th century, zemstvo doctors prescribed them for almost any illness. The Soviet government also reacted favorably to these “bloodsuckers” and developed hirudotherapy (from the Latin name for leech - hirudomedicinalis): in the 1920s, the International Center for Medical Leeches was opened in the country, which is still considered the world’s largest leech “factory”. Doctor of Biological Sciences Isolda Baskova, chairman of the Russian Association of Hirudologists, even calls our country the world leader in leech production. The main sales channels are private hirudologist doctors, hirudology centers, clinics, and, to a lesser extent, pharmacies. The number of hirudologists is growing: “At our first meeting in 1992 there were about eighty people, but now there are more than a thousand of them in Moscow,” says Isolda Baskova.

Gentle Vampires

Gennady Nikonov, General Director of the International Center for Medical Leeches (ICML), still laments: they say, we have not yet developed a real culture of leech consumption... However, this cannot be said if you evaluate the dynamics of the four existing official production facilities. The same MCMP has doubled its production volume since 2003 - to three million individuals per year - and now plans to open a new workshop. Lyubertsy "Girudomed" produces 1.8 million leeches per year. Here and at the leech “farm” “Girud I.N.” in the city of Balakovo, Saratov region, they talk about an annual increase in production of at least 10–15%.

Six to seven million leeches per year - this is the total “capacity” of official producers. All players assess the demand for leech as increased and admit that sometimes they are even forced to refuse customers.

So the market has room to grow: both in production volumes and in price. The selling price of a leech is 30 rubles, in pharmacies it reaches fifty. Meanwhile, in France, one individual costs 5 euros, in Germany - more than 12. According to Sergei Ermakov, general director of the Girudomed company, in a year or two a leech in Russia will cost one and a half euros, and this is quite justified.

A logical question: why not export the leech? Many would like to, but it all comes down to bureaucracy. You can export a leech only after receiving permission from the International Organization for the Protection of Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna. So far, MCMP has succeeded, which supplies leech to France. The center’s general director does not advertise the volume of supplies and the cost of leeches for export, but he does say that he sells it “at the pharmacy level” (that is, 45–50 rubles), and certainly more than 100 thousand a year. And they ask for even more.

Leeches and breeders

What is leech production like? Racks with thousands of cans, hundreds of thousands of “worms” and a minimum of mechanization. Getting the leeches out, feeding them, changing the water, setting them aside for mating, sorting them - everything has to be done manually.

This is not for you to catch wild leeches in a pond. It is strictly prohibited to use wild leech for medical purposes due to the possibility of infection. To earn the right to taste human blood, medicinal leeches are born under constant supervision, eat, mate and lay cocoons. However, we can’t do without wild brothers either: they are necessary to renew the gene pool.

How much does a leech need to be happy? According to Gennady Nikonov, not so little: water, plenty of bull's blood, warm hands, as well as clean air, which one can only dream of in the Moscow region. And there is also space: to house a million leeches, you will need a thousand square meters. The purest water is required, which means a purification system is needed, the cost of which, according to Nikonov’s calculations, will be two and a half million rubles. You need to create a microclimate in the room and maintain a constant temperature. You cannot do without a ventilation system costing at least a million rubles so that the humidity does not go off scale beyond 80%. A small touch to the business plan: jars, bottles, racks and other utensils will cost 200–300 thousand rubles.

In general, the cost of the first stage of creating a farm for 500 individuals (there is no point in starting with anything less) will be approximately 15-20 million rubles. According to all market players, the project will reach self-sufficiency no earlier than in five years.

Externally, the technology for growing leeches looks quite simple. The profession of a specialist in “leech” production is called “cultivator”. In the MCMP, each breeder is assigned a production site (one thousand queens). The grower is responsible for the entire life cycle of his charges and is obliged to produce 110 thousand leeches per year. The queen can “give birth” two to three times a year and produce up to a thousand leeches. A leech is grown for sale for at least eight months, the weight of a marketable individual is 1.5-3 grams.

The MCMP “farm” has several rooms: a “workshop” for commercial leeches, a “mating room,” a dark room with shelves where cocoons mature in jars with wet peat, from which “fry” emerge. Each cocoon can contain 10-15 embryos. The leech “spits out” the cocoons along with saliva.

The diet of leeches is pleasantly monotonous: only certified bovine blood. The queen leech must be fattened to a weight that is five times the weight of the commercial specimen. The “food” of leeches cannot be limited: they need to literally suck on their fill. A population of MCMP leeches, for example, absorbs 4 tons of blood per week. Farms buy it from meat processing plants at a price of approximately 15-17 rubles per kilogram. But finding high-quality blood is not easy: many meat processing plants are not operating at full capacity - or with frozen carcasses. “There is little bovine blood, there are a lot of sick animals,” says Sergei Ermakov. “Sometimes you have to travel very far to get blood.” Several years ago, most factories did not slaughter livestock at all, so the leech was in danger of real starvation, recalls Gennady Nikonov.

However, the simplicity of production processes when growing leeches is only apparent.

It is necessary to comply with all growing conditions, which I cannot talk about, because this is a patent,” explains Gennady Nikonov. - We have been developing them for years. It is necessary to have a good knowledge of the biology of invertebrates, which include the leech, and the ecological features of the area are very important. Why, for example, are there no wild leech in the Moscow region? It used to be. We are trying to plant the leech in water bodies, looking for places where it could be selected under natural conditions, but it does not grow. There is nothing but dirt all around!

A workshop, not a swamp!

Manufacturers of leeches call theirs extremely complex not only from a technological point of view. They note that the process of collecting the documentation necessary to open a leech “farm” will take at least two years. Breeding medicinal leech is a pharmaceutical production. This means that you will have to obtain a license from Roszdravnadzor, register and certify the “medicinal product”. After all, from the point of view of the law, a leech is nothing more than a medicine. True, due to some misunderstanding, he is alive.

In fact, a leech farm must meet the same stringent requirements as large-scale pharmaceutical production. And the demands on such productions are becoming more stringent every year. As a result, it turns out that those working in this business were those who managed to register even before licensing of pharmaceutical enterprises became extremely complicated, that is, until the early 2000s.

It is this (and not the difficulties of “girudivka”) that stops new players. Professor Isolda Baskova is sure that Russia needs new biofactories. And entrepreneurs are showing great interest in this niche. Market players claim that people who are passionate about this idea turn to them every now and then. But the result is still zero.

“Gerud I.N.” ready to sell his technology for 200 thousand dollars. Other players are more closed. Gennady Nikonov (MCMP) is in no hurry to disseminate the technology, advocating “clean business.” He believes that if a businessman has serious intentions, then he can “restore the technological process brick by brick” by studying methodological literature. Alexander Bazin, director of the Girud I.N. company, notes, however, that this will clearly not be enough to organize successful production.

“It seems a pity to donate technology, but it makes no sense to sell it. Why will they suffer? - Nikonov grins. - What do I care? I want new businesses to open. We are even ready to buy leech from them, which we lack for cosmetic production. But what can I do if they can’t do it?” In addition, according to Nikonov, an entrepreneur who encounters difficulties in breeding a medicinal leech will most likely not resist the temptation to catch a wild one and sell it. This is the easiest way. Sergei Ermakov is also concerned about the safety of the wild leech population: there is a danger that “entrepreneurs”, fascinated by easy and quick money, will catch it outright.

Quiet pool

One of the problems that somewhat darkens the life of official leech producers is the existence of “duremars” - those who catch and sell wild leech under the guise of medical. In the summer, the market is flooded with similar offers, and at dumping prices. Manufacturers immediately feel the opening of the leech fishing season by a drop in demand for their products. But in late autumn everything returns to normal.

The black market for leeches is quite extensive. According to Sergei Ermakov from Gerudomed, it reaches three million pieces. “A huge amount of wild leech is imported to us, and doctors start using it,” says Ermakov. - A lot of such leeches are sent to the Urals. If in Moscow there are quite strict requirements for certification and declaration of medicines, then in the regions there are no such requirements. Tatarstan and the Volga region, for example, mainly work on wild leech.”

There are also leech manufacturers on the market who operate without a license: according to Gennady Nikonov, in Russia, in addition to the licensed ones, there are about eight more “shadow” industries, two of them in the Moscow region.

On the Internet you can find advertisements whose authors offer leech “cheap and high quality”. Business Journal found one in which an individual was offered for 12 rubles. The seller who answered the call hesitated for a long time, and then evasively said that he was not selling a leech at all, but was simply “studying the market.” It must be thought very deeply - after all, the announcement was made back in 2005. In the end, the interlocutor noted that, in his opinion, no one breeds leeches in Russia. But there are many who are “foolish.”

Wild leeches are caught mainly by private individuals or teams. According to Gennady Nikonov, some of them have licenses, some do not.

Official producers also depend on wild leech: they need it “for the tribe.” To engage in trapping, they apply for a special permit from the Ministry of Natural Resources. The main fishing area is natural reservoirs of the Krasnodar Territory. “Our people take boots a couple of times a year (they catch a leech by going into a pond in boots: it sticks to them) and go there to relax and swim,” says Gennady Nikonov from the MCMP. The center's need for wild leeches is 20-30 thousand individuals per year. Girudomed went even further - it opened a branch in the south with its own reservoirs.

Working on a leech

All “leech” factories are simultaneously engaged in the production of dosage forms and cosmetics based on leech components. One of the reasons for diversification is that such products are much easier to bring to pharmacies than unsightly, and even demanding, worms. After all, many pharmacy chains are not eager to burden themselves with caring for a leech, the sale of which requires special conditions of detention. “If, say, in the Soviet Union this was generally accepted (leeches were traditionally kept in pharmacies), now many do not want to deal with it. This is a living creature,” explains Alexander Bazin from Girud I.N. Of course, leech is available in Moscow pharmacy retail stores. But now you can buy it only in four dozen pharmacies. The “big” drug trade is not yet very interested in the leech.

According to David Melik-Guseinov, head of the marketing research department at Pharmexpert, the number of leech consumers is declining, and the market lives mainly by increasing prices: “I think that neighboring markets, dietary supplements, and cosmetics will grow. It’s not for nothing that manufacturers are engaged in both leeches and various drugs based on them.”

Manufacturers themselves also consider the creation of a leech-based product with greater added value to be a completely natural development path.

Five years ago, I would have said that this is a more interesting direction than leech breeding itself,” says Sergei Ermakov. - But now - no longer, because we simply do not have enough raw materials. We don't have any leftovers at all. And the raw materials are quite expensive, especially if you milk the leech for saliva.

Gennady Nikonov also admits that so far the development of the cosmetics industry has to be limited due to a lack of raw materials. No more than 10% of the leech contained in the center is used for cosmetic production. Currently, Doctor Nikonov medicinal cosmetics, which have been in production for four years, account for 35% of MCMP sales. There are about fifty items in the line, the cost of cosmetics is from 80 rubles to 40-60 thousand per item.

The basis of cosmetics is the bioenergy complex HM1, isolated from leech. To obtain this “extract,” the leech must first be frozen, then dried and crushed. The raw materials are really valuable: the ratio between live and concentrated leech is ten to one (10 grams of live leech - 1 gram of dry mixture). One of the most expensive creams is produced using “threads” - newborn leeches, which are actually very similar to threads. These undeveloped organisms have unique components. “It’s like there’s a haze on your face!” - the employees speak with delight about the effect of the cream.

“In terms of cosmetics, we work in our own small, clean ecological niche,” explains Nikonov. “And for now we are satisfied that there is little production.” However, Nikonov has already lost interest in cosmetic production as such: when there were five items, he participated in the development of each drug, but now he is not interested. New plans have emerged: to produce medicines, food additives, biocorrectors.

"Girud I.N." For several years now it has been producing “Piyavit” - a medicinal product that is a leech crushed into dry powder.

One of our goals is the development of hirudopharmacology,” says Alexander Bazin. - Several dosage forms have already been developed, including eye drops and ointment. But the registration process with Roszdravnadzor is quite complicated, so bringing these products to market is not easy. It is difficult to say when the new forms will be registered.

Having overcome the difficulties with registering medicines, manufacturers will have to think about sales tactics: after all, there is still no stable demand for such products. According to David Melik-Huseinov, dietary supplements and similar drugs, including Piyavit, are sold in pharmacy chains in very modest quantities - no more than one to two thousand euros per month.

But players have no serious reasons for concern: exactly as long as the market’s need for the leech itself does not decrease. Bazin assesses the market prospects very carefully: “Demand increases every year. But it is difficult to say whether this trend will steadily strengthen. On the one hand, the population is now turning to natural medicines. But the main threshold that many find difficult to cross is disgust.” Gennady Nikonov, in turn, radiates a downright Olympic calm: the craving for natural medicines will definitely not disappear in the next five years. But then a “tilt” in pharmacology is possible - and the emergence of new trends. But this is far from a fact. And in any case - even if we assume that the demand for leeches begins to fall - an influx of new players is not expected. “Growing a leech is becoming more and more difficult and expensive every year, and everyone understands this,” Nikonov states, either with regret or with pleasure.

Live needle

There is a great temptation to attribute magical abilities to the leech: in ancient times it was even “put” against damage and the evil eye, believing that it sucked out “bad” blood. However, the value of these bloodsuckers lies not only in their ability to quickly suck blood into all 10 of their ventricles. Much more important is that they share their own “secret” with their “victim”. This is a whole bunch of biologically active substances that the leech “injects” into the body when it bites. One of the most effective is hirudin. The main advantage of the secretion is that it is able to eliminate congestion in the bloodstream.

In general, medicine identifies about ten areas of beneficial effects of a leech bite, including preventing blood clots, normalizing blood pressure and lipid metabolism, and lowering cholesterol levels. Leeches are mainly used in the treatment of heart diseases - hypertension, angina pectoris, as well as infertility and varicose veins, as a wound healing agent. In addition, leeches are prescribed for hypoxia in pregnant women; they have an immunostimulating effect on the body and, finally, are a living analgesic - they provide pain relief at the site of their own bite.

The leech is a born “doctor”: it purposefully bites the skin only at the so-called “acupuncture points” along which energy “meridians” pass. Unpleasant sensations when bitten by a leech - a slight burning sensation - last no more than two minutes. The entire session will take 40-60 minutes. But for the leech itself, this meal becomes fatal: re-use of the medicinal leech is not recommended, so it is destroyed.

Humanity has been using leeches for medicinal purposes for several millennia. Actions reminiscent of hirudotherapy sessions are even depicted on the walls of the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs. In the 18th–19th centuries, leeches were especially popular in Europe, and Russia was the largest exporter of leeches to England and France. They were used like aspirin for any ailment. Society ladies believed that leeches could give their skin youth and a great mood for themselves.

However, in the 20th century, with the development of pharmaceuticals, leeches faded into the background; Only older people, out of old habit, used such an exotic medicine. And only at the end of the 20th century, along with the fashion for everything natural, the rise of hirudotherapy began. Everyone suddenly remembered that the leech has at least one undoubted advantage: the complete absence of side effects. It’s just a pity that one small problem prevents us from meeting the mass demand for an “ecologically friendly drug”: there are practically no “pure” medicinal leeches left in nature, and it is not easy to grow them, taking into account the state of the environment. Leeches are terribly sensitive creatures. In Chernobyl, for example, they were one of the first to die out.

Breeding leeches could be a profitable legal business, but officially this type of activity is equated to the production of medicinal pharmaceuticals. This means that for its implementation a license from Roszdravnadzor is required, and the leeches themselves and their production must undergo certification. Of course, government agencies impose a number of strict requirements, including the education of personnel, sanitary control of premises and devices needed for work, feeding regimes, and much more. Therefore, only 4 farms in Russia legally operate in this area. Their owners received licenses back in the 90s, when it was much simpler.

The market demand for medicinal leeches is satisfied mainly by illegal producers. But in total they do this by no more than 30-40%. So, daredevils who are not embarrassed by the difficulties that the maintenance of leeches directly and all those associated with the sale of products cause, will find a rather unclaimed niche.

Despite the development of science and the introduction of the most advanced medical techniques, hirudotherapy is reviving its popularity. Mainly supporters of this method are attracted by the action of leech extract, which contains the enzyme hirudin. In addition, the dosage in blood loss and the complex of responses of the body to a bite, which can have a beneficial effect, useful for a number of diseases, the treatment of which will be significantly simplified.

Our business assessment:

Starting investment - 50,000 rubles.

Market saturation is low.

The difficulty of starting a business is 2/10.

What should you not believe?

Information that for this you need to register an individual entrepreneur, and OKVED must indicate 01.49.9 - “Breeding of other animals not included in other groups.” Everyone decides for themselves how to build relations with the state, but there is hardly any need to attract unnecessary attention to themselves. If an entrepreneur is able to obtain a license, then he will definitely be able to resolve the issue of registering activities. Otherwise, you need to proceed from the reality of the situation.

It is also impossible to say anything definite about what the room should be like and how many containers and other equipment will be needed. It all depends on the manufacturer’s ambitions, his experience and how successfully he finds outlets for selling his products. Many people want to buy medicinal leeches, but this does not mean that it is so easy to organize independent retail sales. Stories that you need a room with an area of ​​100 square meters or more should not be considered a rule. meters. For a beginner, a regular rack that can accommodate 50-60 three-liter jars and a couple of aquariums will be enough.

What do you need to know?

First of all, have the practice of breeding itself. Beginners are advised to treat it as a hobby. Let us describe the first steps in this exciting business.

We prepare the containers. For starters, a few three-liter jars may be enough. But ideally, there is an aquarium and several dozen jars of different sizes - two-liter, three- and five-liter, you can prepare something similar to a terrarium, since there are no clear rules here. We are thinking about where all this equipment will be located - on tables or shelves, some kind of wall shelves. Additional containers needed for settling ordinary tap water will also come in handy. To prepare it, you can use any dechlorination methods used by aquarists.

You cannot keep more than 10 leeches in one three-liter jar, and you can safely put 50 worms of this species in a 10-liter aquarium. It’s a good idea to add some vegetation to jars, aquariums and other containers, for example, the usual floating riccia.

In this case, we are talking about mastering the process itself. If the business is on a grand scale, then a real, completely medical pharmaceutical factory for growing leeches has other approaches. Everything happens under consistently regulated conditions, with strict adherence to process technology, much of which is automated. True, the specialized company Gerudo-Med LLC, which exists in Russia, a completely official leech farm, also uses the can method of breeding these useful vampires.

Business as usual...

Daily maintenance activities include changing the water and observing general conditions of maintenance, monitoring the condition of the pets. If the leeches don’t like something, they “dirty” the water. And everyone is happy - they cling to the walls and hang in a vertical position. At the same time, they protrude half out of the water. You also need to fill the container about halfway with it.

You should strive to ensure that there are leeches of the same age in one jar. Therefore, another action is to transplant leeches from one home to another. We should not forget that they can be active, so aquariums and jars should be covered with lids that allow air to pass through. Regular gauze wraps will do.

The most important...

More responsible actions are feeding and reproduction. If we assume that the cultivation of leeches is carried out strictly officially, then first of all the inspection commissions will be concerned with the question of where the blood is taken for this purpose. For a small home complex, you can buy blood clots on the market. Some farmers sell them to make rare sausage. Larger production will require ordering blood from the slaughterhouse. At the same time, legal production requires not only compliance with sanitation rules, but also strict documentation.

Private practitioners recommend this method. The blood clot is wrapped in adhesive film, which is used in stores for packaging meat or fish, and suspended in a container with leeches. This method is suitable for feeding young and mature individuals. This is done once every 2-3 months. Before delivery of medicinal leeches to retail distributors begins, they must fast for approximately the same period.

Reproduction of leeches is a more complicated matter. For mating and the copulation process, you need to prepare peat, check it for the possible presence of foreign impurities, and then fill it with infused dechlorinated water. It is important to keep the proportions correctly. If the mixture is too thin or too dry, the leeches will not be able to make the moves needed to lay cocoons. Semi-adult leeches of similar size, which have already been fed 3-4 times, are placed in jars with water in pairs. They wrap around each other, stick together and the process of fertilization begins. Mating can last about a month. Leeches do not have females directly, but in a pair one of them will play her role.

Then they are transplanted into jars with diluted peat to the desired consistency. After a certain number of days, it will be possible to find cocoons in it, which in their structure are similar to foam rubber, and are somewhat smaller in size than a quail egg. Cocoons can be found inside passages made in peat and even on its surface. When examining them in the light, small leeches that are located inside the nutrient will become noticeable.

Newborn leeches appear in the jar after about thirty days. Each cocoon produces from 10 to 15 filaments, as young growth is commonly called. At the same time, some inheritance is lost from time to time.

It's time to think about income

Having obtained a general understanding of the peculiarities of keeping these toothy worms, let’s think about how to open a business in the breeding of medicinal leeches. The first thing that should interest us is its profitability. Let's assume that approximately 500 individuals live permanently on our microfarm. This is 250 pairs that can produce about 4-5 cocoons during the mating season. On average, one cocoon will produce 15 filaments, which means the offspring of one pair will be 75 new individuals. Since we have 250 pairs, this means we will acquire 18,750 young leeches.

Since we do not plan to engage in retail ourselves, and most likely will have to start our production unofficially, it will be very good if each one costs 30 rubles. In total, this will give 562,500 rubles. Of course, per year... But the monthly income from such an enterprise will be higher than the average salary in Russia for representatives of many professions - not only doctors and teachers, but also engineers and other specialists. Moreover, one person, with experience, patience and love for this business, will be able to serve about 1000 main individuals. This is usually how they are divided. A certain number are considered as permanent producers of offspring, while some leeches feed several times, then starve and go to sales points. After the mating season, the “population” of the farm reaches its maximum level. 20 thousand leeches will require 2000 three-liter jars. This is not so much when it comes to commercial breeding. 200 cans will fit on one medium-sized rack, and in a large room it will not be difficult to place 10 such racks. Of course, no certification commission will even go to such an improvised farm.

Breeding leeches at home can only be considered as a business, which will always be semi-legal or completely illegal. It has two main components of success - sales points and your own hard work. And the wholesale cost of medicinal leeches becomes in this case a relative concept. The main problem is that a habitual wholesale buyer may suddenly refuse to purchase the product. For example, government inspection and control structures will set more stringent requirements for the availability of certificates for products sold by a pharmacy, and its owner will immediately demand the relevant documents from the seller.

Because of this, all novice businessmen need to realistically assess their strength in terms of making the wholesale sale of leeches completely legal. If there are not enough of them, then it is unlikely that you should attempt breeding in large volumes. It doesn’t matter at all how much leeches cost if the inability to obtain a license and certify the products will not allow you to sell a single one.

Various cases of growing leeches in artificial conditions have clearly shown (and this is important to consider when breeding them):

The ability of leeches to go without food for many months, but at the same time, their “long fast” after eating is not at all a necessity for them;
even with frequent feedings, they greedily absorb large quantities of blood at one time;
It is with frequent feedings of blood without restriction that leeches quickly reach a large mass;
With this feeding regimen, medicinal leeches not only do not die, but also show all the signs of completely healthy animals.

The sexual characteristics of leeches are very remarkable: they are bisexual, bisexual (hermaphrodites), and have organs of both sexes - male and female. The genital organs are significantly developed, very complex, located on the abdominal surface of the animal, along the midline of the body, closer to its anterior end. They are close to each other, the male organ (stem with the foreskin, scrotum and testicles) is located in front of the female (uterine sleeve, uterus with oviduct and ovaries). A leech does not fertilize itself, but copulates with another leech, sometimes with two, thus fertilizing its partner and at the same time being fertilized by it.

Copulation can last from 15 to 18 hours. The period of sexual arousal (in the third year of life, and under artificial conditions leeches are capable of childbearing at about 22 months of age) is spring, summer, but it can be the end of autumn and even much later. Fruiting lasts from 30 to 40 days, after which eggs emerge from the uterus, wrapped in a thick layer of mucous substance, which soon hardens, turning into a cocoon similar to the cocoon of a silkworm. Inside its cavity there is water and from 15 to 30 eggs. Leeches bury cocoons in the ground, in the banks of their habitat, in conical depressions or between stones.

After 40 days, under favorable circumstances, especially in sunny weather, leech cubs hatch from the eggs; they crawl out of the cocoon through a small hole on its cone. The cub is so small that it is noticeable only when it moves, but it immediately reveals a greed for food. It is white in color and only after a few months it becomes faintly colored from the tail to the head and differs in color from the adult leech. The cubs grow slowly (especially the first two years), from five to eight years, and can live for twenty years. Under natural conditions, a leech reaches the size necessary for treatment no earlier than five years and is suitable for medical use from the age of three to four.

Under artificial conditions, a leech can be grown to a mass suitable for use in medicine (1.5 - 2 grams) within 12 - 15 months to 3 years. They live on average 3 - 4 years, rarely - up to eight years or more.