New beginings for our first Cheetah offspring..

1st Nov 2009

October 2009, Eastern Cape
This past week has been a quiet hunting week but a very busy one on the game reserve. About 5 years ago we introduced our first Cheetah, at that stage we had provided a home for “problem” Cheetah from up north. The reason these Cheetah were refered to as “problem” animals was due to the fact that they had been caught on domestic farm land, these Cheetah had been responsible for losses of domestic livestock. First a male was introduced and later that year a female, things started slow but progress was made when the first young arrived two years later. Five young were born and things were looking good for our small Cheetah population until our southern most lion pride discovered the young and killed two of the five. Of the three that remained only one has not made it to adulthood due to an encounter with Lions earlier this year.
Last month it was discovered that our adult female is pregnant once again and should be due with her next young in the next 2 months. A decision had to be made about the number of Cheetah the game reserve could support. It was decided that we would relocate the two remaining young adult Cheetah to another game reserve in the north, hereby spreading the nucleus of the Cheetah population throughout South Africa.
All went well with the capture and both Cheetah have made it to their new home, reports tell us that they seem to be settling into their new home very well and have already made contact with the established Cheetah population in that area. We look forward to our new young in a few months time and hope to add to the conservation of Cheetah in the Eastern Cape for many more years.
We have our first Swedish hunters arriving this week and all are looking forward to sharing our African culture and fantastic hunting.