Saving Snakes

This evening I had a great phone call from Joff Minns, a good friend of mine who runs a Dhow trip North of Lamu. On the evening of the19th of November 2007 the Tusitiri was mored about 200 meters from the shore in a bay at Ndau, a few kilometres South West of Kiwaiyu Island. [...]

Yesterday we noticed that one of our Black Mambas Dendroaspis polylepis was still sick. It has been sick for a few days now. It developed an infection in the mouth associated with Mouth Rot (Necrotic stomatitis). The Bio-Ken team removed it from its cage and Sanda Ashe, my fellow Director, gave it a Oxytetracycline injection, [...]

Today Anthony Childs saved these two Small Scaled Mole Vipers (Burrowing Asps) Atractaspis microlepidota at Elsa’s in Meru National Park. They were found at different times on the Rock. On putting them in the release box they started getting frisky to the extent of fighting, there was a little blood but he believes they were [...]

This afternoon we collected two Speckled Bush Snakes Philothamnus punctatus from the Jimba area west of Bio-Ken. One normal, i.e. green in colour the second blue, a rare colour phase which is actually reasonably common in the Watamu area. The snakes were collected from two separate villages, both in good condition and were both released [...]

Being seen driving ‘Olive’ our old Bio-Ken Snake Farm land-rover a group of building site workers pulled me over to say very proudly that they had just killed a very dangerous Green Mamba Dendroaspis angusticeps that tried to attack them while they were eating breakfast in a road side kiosk. On inspecting the snake I [...]

Yesterday afternoon we rescued a Red Head Beaked Snake Rhamphiophis rubropunctatus from Mr. Richard Bennett’s house in Watamu. It had first been wrongly identified as a Black Mamba Dendroaspis polylepis by the house staff. Fortunately it was not killed and we were called to remove it, just goes to show that even a snake as [...]

This morning a good specimen of the rare Watamu Bark Snake Hemirhagerrhis hildebrandtii was collected from Mr. Mickey Fernandez’s house on plot 41, Watamu. The snake was taken back to Bio-Ken for further study. Several of these snakes have been collected from the beach plots in Watamu. This means that hopefully their numbers in the [...]

Bio-Ken Snake Farm in Watamu, Kenya is actively involved in the saving of snakes. This is our first post and over the next few weeks we hope to introduce you to the active work we are doing in the field. Please check out our web site until then www.bio-ken.com Below is a picture of an [...]