2025 AHH / BHS Drayton Manor Conference

Saturday, 15 March 2025 - Sunday, 16 March 2025

Following the great success of the 2024 event we've already booked the Drayton Manor conference facility for 2025. Big thanks to all who attended in 2024 and completed the feedback survey - your views and thoughts will be feeding into the planning for 2025

The conference has become established as a major international event, focusing on the care and breeding of reptiles and amphibians. Our aim is to provide a platform for sharing best practise and latest thinking across both private and professional communities involved in herpetological husbandry - and the event attracts delegates from UK, Europe and beyond....

We structure the program to include plenty of time for networking, visiting sponsor's stands and also the ever popular zoo tour

Not attended before? Here's a link to a video about the 2024 event made by our keynote speaker, Jerry Fife : 2024 Conference Video

And here's a link to the 2024 event program to give you an idea of how it works : March 2024 Conference Program

Update 24.11.24

2025 Conference booking now open! Click on the 'Book Tickets' button to see the options

The ticket cost includes all refreshments during the day for whichever day(s) you book for, including lunch

BHS members get discount prices of £75 for the full weekend or £40 for either Saturday or Sunday only - to get access to these special prices, you'll need to be logged into the website as a BHS member. If any problems with this, contact

IMPORTANT: If you have any special dietary requirements, please be sure to add this info in the provided box during the booking process

The Saturday evening event (held at the venue) will include dinner, a talk and a quiz - should be a great evening and not to be missed! But please note - this has to be booked separately during ticket purchase, it's NOT included in the conference attendance tickets.

Needing to stay?

The Resort includes a 4 star hotel a couple of minutes walk from the conference venue - we've agreed discount Bed and Breakfast rates for delegates for the weekend as follows:

Standard room, single or double occupancy - £90.00 per night

To book at these rates, you'll need to call the Resort Hotel on +44 1827 285551 and ask for the conference delegate rate

The resort has plenty of parking both at the hotel and next to the conference venue

NOTE

Tickets to the conference do NOT include access to the resort itself ; we expect - but can't guarantee - that the resort will in any case be closed for normal visiting during the conference weekend

A full program will be available as soon as we can but meantime the organising team are hard at work sorting out speakers and sponsors. We already have some great speakers confirmed with these provisional talk topics:

Bart Spanoghe - keeping and breeding Lacertids

Paul Tapley - amphibian care and breeding plus CITES paperwork experiences

Marie Kubiak - reptile reproductive problems

Tom Marriott - integrating wild observations into captive care

Mark O'Shea - topic TBC

Francis Cosquieri - topic TBC but likely to be something on snakes...!

Lori Torini - next level reptile training

Erin Rickman-Hills - topic TBC from her lab team's ongoing research into multiple aspects of the welfare of reptiles in captivity

Chas Thompson - REPTA update

Chester Zoo - Use of accelerometers in captive Komodo dragons as tool to assess welfare, use of environment and applications to the wild populations plus update on a number of captive breeding projects

Ben Owens - care and breeding of Hydrosaurus species

There'll be more - plus we're planning to offer a number of practical workshops during the weekend, on a variety of topics - full details will be available as soon as we've finalised and if you book for the conference, you'll be contacted at later date with a link to book on to the workshops ; the workshops are included in the ticket pricing - there'll be no extra charge for attending these

If you have any queries that are not covered in the information above, just email

Students!

We want your research posters for display and presentation at Conference - see below for details and the poster submission form:

Guidance_for_Student_Research_Poster_Submissions_2025_

AHH_BHS_Student_Research_Poster_Submission_Form_2025

Students whose posters are accepted for display get free conference admission for the weekend plus a £50 contribution to travelling costs - together with a great opportunity to showcase their research to a targeted and relevant audience of 160+ people

To see some examples of posters displayed at previous conferences, please go here: Student Posters

IMPORTANT: a successful application to display a poster at the conference will be considered as permission for photos of the poster to be taken and used in future promotional activities by and for the BHS and future conferences