By Russ Case
Click image to enlarge Star Tortoise Female. Photo by Jerry D. Fife, www.FifeReptiles.com. |
What would a reptile website be without care sheets? A common reason people go to the Internet is to find out the care requirements for different animals so they can better maintain their pets. So of course it was only a matter of time before ReptileChannel began featuring care sheets.
We didn’t want to rush into this, however. We wanted to get the best people to write them. One thing about the Internet that can get a little dicey is the fact that it is largely unmonitored. Anybody can post anything on the Internet. We wanted to be sure that ReptileChannel’s care sheets were written by knowledgeable reptile people who knew what they were talking about.
Granted, whether or not I always know what I’m talking about is open to debate, but I did write the first one on the site, the care sheet for bearded dragons. I’ve kept a number of bearded dragons over the years, and I did have a brief stint breeding them (just for fun, not for profit, and certainly not on a large scale), so I thought I could write a care sheet for them.
For quite a while that was the only care sheet we had. But then Ben Weiner, ReptileChannel’s web editor, and I mapped out a plan to pump up the care sheet selection. We ran down our list of animals and considered who should write the correlating care sheets, and we think anyone who knows the industry would agree that we got the right people to write them.
For instance, Ron Tremper wrote our leopard gecko care sheet. Ron has been working with leopards for many years, and has developed lots of great color morphs. He’s a real pioneer in the leopard gecko realm, and he was a natural to write the leopard gecko care sheet.
If you think “corn snake” you should also think “Kathy Love,” and Kathy provided the corn snake care sheet. Kathy isn’t called the Corn Snake Queen for nothing, after all!
On the chelonian front, we’ve got a spotted turtle care sheet by Al Roach and a star tortoise care sheet by Jerry Fife. Both Al and Jerry have been long-time experts who have frequently written books and articles about turtles and tortoises.
The care sheet section of ReptileChannel will grow and grow. We’re rolling it out now, so if you don’t see a reptile you would like to know about, check back and someday you should see a care sheet that will provide you with expertly written, reliable information. And by all means, let us know the species you think we should include, and we’ll make every effort to get it covered eventually.
