Watamu Snake Farm (formerly Bio-Ken)

Bio-Ken is a venom and reptile research facility in Watamu, founded in 1980 by the herpetologist James Ashe and his wife Sanda. It is not a roadside attraction with a python for photographs. It keeps one of the largest collections of East African venomous snakes anywhere, it extracts venom, and its reason for existing is snakebite.

The facility now trades as the Watamu Snake Farm, operated by the Taylor Ashe Antivenom Foundation. The Bio-Ken name is still what almost everyone uses, and it is the name under which most signage, guidebooks and directions refer to it, but the old web address no longer resolves and current material uses the new one. Searching for either will find the same place.

What the Work Is

Snakebite is a neglected tropical disease that falls hardest on rural poor households. The foundation running the farm puts the global toll at roughly 138,000 deaths a year and more than 500,000 people left disabled, and records snakebite as accounting for 44.8 per cent of human and wildlife conflict cases in Kenya. Survivors face amputation, disfigurement, lost livelihoods and social exclusion, and the cost of treatment can take a household apart.

The farm sits at the front of that problem. Venom is extracted from the collection under controlled conditions and supplied for antivenom production and research, and the facility has long been described as the only one in East Africa doing this at scale. Donations have paid for a new milking suite and laboratory, and the foundation is working with international partners on a pan-African polyvalent antivenom, the absence of which is one of the reasons treatment on this continent is so patchy. The declared aim is aligned with the World Health Organization target of halving snakebite deaths and disability by 2030.

The Ashes, Royjan Taylor and the Name

James Ashe was one of the significant African herpetologists of his generation, and the large spitting cobra Naja ashei carries his name. He and Sanda set up Bio-Ken in 1980 as a reptile research and education centre.

As James’s health declined in 2002, his protégé Royjan Taylor took over the running of the farm with the stated ambition of building Kenya’s first snakebite centre of excellence. Taylor died in 2019, and the Taylor Ashe Antivenom Foundation was established in memory of both men to carry the work forward. The renaming of the public-facing operation followed from that, which is why a visitor will see two names attached to one address.

The Collection and the Demonstrations

The animals are East African species, and the two that draw everyone are the black mamba and Ashe’s spitting cobra. The collection is unusually deep in the animals that actually cause harm in this region, because those are the ones the laboratory needs. Guides here are venomous snake handlers rather than attendants, and the farm invites visitors who are frightened of snakes to say so at the start, on the reasonable theory that an hour with someone who works with them daily is the best available cure.

The extraction demonstration is the heart of the visit and the part that separates this from a reptile house. A handler works through the process in front of visitors, explaining what the venom is, how it is collected and what it is for, with the extracted venom visible at the end. Milking demonstrations run on weekdays at 10am and 11am, and a snake handling demonstration at 3pm. Both are included in the tour, and both are the reason to time an arrival rather than dropping in at random.

A Reptile Rangers children’s club runs on Saturday mornings from 8.30 to 10.30, with tortoise feeding, crafts and reptile work; under-fours must be accompanied. The farm also runs guided half-day snake safaris on foot through surrounding community land, cashew and coconut cultivation and a cave system used by bats, and arranges photography sessions with handlers positioning animals in naturalistic settings. Both are set up in advance rather than walked into.

Visiting Bio-Ken

The farm is a few minutes from the Watamu hotels, in Kilifi County, and signposted locally. Published opening hours are 9am to 3.30pm; the site’s own listings are not entirely consistent on the closing time, so confirm by telephone for a late-afternoon arrival.

The tour is priced at KES 1,500 for adults and KES 500 for children, and the Reptile Rangers club at KES 1,300 per child including refreshments. Those rates are published by the operator on its own sites and were checked on 21 September 2026. Advance arrangement is not required for the standard tour, though arriving for one of the demonstration slots takes a little planning.

Allow an hour, more if a demonstration falls inside the visit. It sits naturally alongside Watamu Turtle Conservation as the other working conservation operation in the village, and it is genuinely useful preparation for anyone about to spend time walking in Arabuko Sokoke Forest.

Questions Travellers Ask About Bio-Ken