Practical Reptile Keeping: Britain's Monthly Magazine for Reptile and Amphibian Keepers
Practical Reptile Keeping is a monthly herpetology magazine published in the United Kingdom by Kelsey Media, the company also listed as Kelsey Publishing. Launched in 2009, it serves people who keep reptiles and amphibians in vivariums and terrariums at home, from first-time keepers choosing a first snake or gecko to experienced breeders working with less common species. Its official website is practicalreptilekeeping.co.uk, and the magazine is written in English from a British base in London, although its publisher descriptions stress that it attracts an international readership. That international reach makes sense for its subject: the animals it covers, the equipment used to house them and the specialist knowledge needed to keep them well are traded and discussed across borders, and a monthly magazine that gathers that knowledge in one place has a potential audience far beyond the United Kingdom.
The title has a distinctive claim attached to it. Publisher and library descriptions describe Practical Reptile Keeping as the only monthly herp care magazine published in English. Whether a reader comes to it for a caresheet on a particular species, a health feature written with veterinary insight, or news of a scientific discovery reported from the wider world of herpetology, the magazine's promise is practical: its name is also its editorial brief, and every issue is expected to help readers look after animals better.
Origins and Launch in 2009
Practical Reptile Keeping was first released in 2009. It arrived at a time when reptile keeping in Britain was already a well-established hobby with its own shops, breeders, shows and specialist suppliers, but one whose knowledge still travelled largely through books, club networks and the trade itself. A monthly magazine gave that world a regular rhythm: new species information, updated husbandry thinking and product news could reach keepers every month rather than waiting for a new book edition. References to the magazine note that it has been supported by advertising revenue from reptile stores and websites, which underlines how closely the title has always been tied to the specialist retail trade that supplies its readers with animals, live food, heating, lighting and housing.
More than a decade and a half after its launch, the magazine continues to publish monthly, with issues also made available digitally through library magazine services such as OverDrive, where libraries in several countries carry it. That digital afterlife has extended the title well beyond British newsstands and specialist shops, putting British-published herpetological advice in front of keepers in North America and elsewhere.
Editor David Alderton
The magazine's editor is David Alderton, a British writer specialising in pets and natural history. Alderton originally trained to become a veterinary surgeon, but an allergic dermatitis acquired in his final year of study forced a change of career and led him into writing about pets and their care. That veterinary background, even though his career took a different turn, is relevant to the tone of a magazine in which health care advice is a standing ingredient: readers are dealing with living animals whose welfare depends on correct conditions, and editorial authority matters.
Alderton has since become a prolific author whose books have sold over six million copies and been translated into 30 languages, with titles winning awards in the United States from cat and dog writers' associations and a nomination for the Sir Peter Kent Conservation Book Prize. He has also chaired the National Council for Aviculture, the umbrella organisation for bird-keeping clubs and associations in the United Kingdom. His editorship connects Practical Reptile Keeping to that wider world of organised animal keeping in Britain, in which magazines, clubs and specialist councils have long supported each other.
What the Magazine Covers
The magazine focuses on all aspects of reptile keeping, including species information and caresheets. Its subject range, as described by its publisher, runs across snakes, lizards, tortoises, turtles, amphibians and invertebrates — the bugs that some keepers maintain in their own right and that others know as feeder insects or as part of a bioactive set-up. Choosing animals, feeding them, breeding them and keeping them healthy are the magazine's core concerns, and those concerns are set, in its own description, in the context of the latest scientific findings. Interviews with leading breeders and current news from researchers sit alongside the practical material, so that an issue can move between a keeper's vivarium and a zoologist's fieldwork without changing its underlying purpose.
Each issue, according to library descriptions of the title, is packed with advice on how to look after and breed its subject animals, and includes technical help, product information and health care advice intended to keep animals in good condition, plus breeding details and the latest news relating to this group of creatures from around the world, presented with strong photography. That mixture — the practical, the technical and the newsworthy — is what sustains a monthly title in a hobby where the animals themselves may live for decades.
Species Features and Caresheets
Species coverage is the backbone of the magazine. Caresheets and species profiles give keepers the essential parameters for an animal: the housing it needs, the temperatures and humidity it requires, what it eats and how it behaves. Individual issues show the breadth of that coverage in practice. One issue featured the care and breeding of the Mexican black kingsnake, described as a species whose popularity had grown significantly in recent years despite, or perhaps because of, its striking colouration. Another offered a suggestion for readers with only a small amount of space available for a vivarium who were looking for something other than a leopard gecko, putting forward an ideal small terrestrial gecko instead. A regular Reptile Focus strand has profiled species such as the red pipe snake, Anilius scytale, giving single-species depth of the kind keepers collect and refer back to.
The range extends beyond the familiar pet-shop species. Features have dealt with house geckos and the experience of living alongside them, with Peter's ground agama as encountered by a writer who had known the species in Botswana before moving to Zambia, and with the ribbon snake, whose case was argued in one feature as ripe for a revival among keepers as fashions in the hobby change. For readers who have gained some experience and are looking to expand a collection, the magazine has suggested ranges of species to consider when moving to the next level — an acknowledgement that its readership includes beginners and committed specialists at the same time.
Health, Welfare and the Science Behind Keeping
Health care is a recurring strand, handled with professional input. Veterinary contributors have written for the magazine: one issue carried advice on considerations when buying a snake — where to go and how to recognise a healthy individual — from a veterinarian and snake breeder, and another examined breathing difficulties in a tortoise. A feature by Dr Julia Mueller-Paul explained stress in reptiles, noting that humans are not the only beings able to experience it and exploring how the condition affects the animals, while another of her contributions investigated scent and the unseen world of chemical communication in reptiles and amphibians. This willingness to engage with animal behaviour and physiology, rather than simply listing equipment settings, distinguishes a care magazine from a catalogue, and it reflects the editorial line that choosing, feeding, breeding and health care should be understood in the context of current scientific findings.
That scientific context is supplied by the magazine's news coverage. Issue contents listed by digital library services range widely: a new approach to developing treatments for venomous snake bites; the use of shed snake skins by cavity-nesting birds; research into whether cricket frogs can walk on water; evidence that ants hold grudges; a new technique for tracking rare and elusive reptiles; fresh insights into pterosaurs; the discovery of new frog species in New Guinea, including one resembling bird droppings; a new family of snakes; the genetics of the Aldabra giant tortoise; threats to one of the world's rarest island salamanders; and work on how lizards regenerate their tails, with possible medical benefits. Not all of this is vivarium practice, but all of it builds the natural-history literacy that good keeping rests on.
Field Reports and the Wider Herpetological World
Practical Reptile Keeping also looks outward, beyond the vivarium, to the animals in the wild. Professional herpetologist Paul Donovan has contributed reports from Africa, writing in one issue about his experiences in Zambia and the diversity of species encountered in a surprisingly limited area, and in another about a relatively small lizard species he had known in Botswana. Features on the tortoises of the Caribbean explored how many islands there used to be home to individual types of tortoise, as can still be seen on the Galápagos Islands, alongside research on incubation temperatures and the sex of hatchling turtles and the recovery of green turtle populations in the eastern Mediterranean. For British keepers whose animals originate in such places, this field perspective connects captive care to wild habitats and conservation, and it gives the magazine a breadth that a purely instructional title would lack.
Publisher, Format and Availability
The magazine is published monthly by Kelsey Media in the United Kingdom, in English. Its listed editor, frequency and publisher have remained consistent in reference sources since its early years, and a February 2010 issue cover is recorded in reference works as an early example of the title. Beyond print, issues are distributed digitally; library platforms carry individual issues with their full contents listed, and ebook editions of monthly issues have also been issued through other digital retailers. The magazine's own website, practicalreptilekeeping.co.uk, serves as its online home. For a niche title, that combination of print subscription, specialist retail visibility and library digital distribution is significant: it places the magazine in public libraries internationally, where a curious potential keeper can encounter it without already being inside the hobby.
Readership and Place in the Hobby
The readership Practical Reptile Keeping addresses is defined by responsibility. Its animals are long-lived, often highly specialised in their environmental needs, and entirely dependent on their keeper for heat, light, food and space. A monthly magazine that returns repeatedly to health, housing, feeding and breeding — and that tests hobby practice against scientific findings and veterinary experience — performs a welfare function as well as a leisure one. The magazine speaks both to the newcomer choosing a first gecko and to the established breeder interviewed in its pages, and its survival as a monthly print title since 2009, in a period when many niche magazines have closed or moved online only, suggests that this audience continues to value a collected, edited source of advice.
Within British animal-keeping publishing, the title also belongs to a recognisable family of practical titles — its very name follows the pattern of magazines that promise usable guidance rather than theory. Its editor's parallel involvement in aviculture and pet publishing reinforces those connections. For keepers of cage and aviary birds, fish or reptiles alike, the structure is familiar: species profiles, breeding reports, health advice, product news and the accumulated experience of fellow keepers, delivered on a regular schedule.
Why Practical Reptile Keeping Matters
Practical Reptile Keeping matters because it documents and disciplines a hobby. It records which species are rising in popularity, how breeding is achieved, what equipment is available and what researchers are discovering about the animals concerned — month by month, since 2009. For the individual keeper, it offers caresheets, health guidance and ideas for progressing in the hobby. For the wider herpetological world, it provides a bridge between researchers, breeders, the specialist trade and the home keeper, in the only monthly English-language magazine devoted to herp care. That bridging role, sustained by Kelsey Media and edited by David Alderton, is the magazine's continuing contribution to reptile and amphibian keeping in Britain and to its international readership.
