The livestock farm is actually next to the land where Rudie grew up in eastern-central Namibia. The landowner uses guard donkeys and dogs to protect his livestock from predators, however he has still experienced massive losses and so they set a trap to capture the predators. He was also trying to capture an aardvark who was digging up his pipes.
However, 3 small cheetah babies, approximately 4 months old, went into the cage by mistake. Subsequently the mother arrived and the farmer called us.
Rudie drove up with 4 volunteers to collect the animals and found the mother, approximately 4-5 years old, very thin and in relatively poor condition. The cubs on the other hand are healthy and look in good condition for their age.
Rudie and the volunteers put our own transit cage next to the landowners capture cage and opened both doors and the cheetahs walked through calmly.
After the long drive home, the cheetahs were obviously confused and disoriented. We decided to home them in an isolated camp, away from people and other animal camps.
Once the mother has regained condition and the cubs grow bigger, we’ll then move them into the large purpose built temporary camps. Unfortunately we shall have to wait until the cubs are older before re-releasing them back into the wild. So in the meantime we shall feed, water and provide shelter for them.
They have settled in very well during the 4 weeks they've been here and we make sure they have as little human contact as possible as they will be re-released at some point. We visit them once each day to feed and refresh their water and clean their camp if necessary. We approach them very slowly and after a bit of grumbling, they calm down and accept us being there. The mother has been named "Fiona" after one of the volunteers who rescued the family with Rudie. The cubs are yet to be named!
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