Today the skies cleared and we had our first 'proper' day at the project, so I thought I'd give a bit of a rundown of what a daily routine entails.
As I mentioned before, we get up early for a start between 6.30 and 7. This is to do the morning rounds of checking for poop, cleaning the water bowls, collecting the food bowls from the night before and feeding the small cats. This all takes about an hour and a half by the time we prepare food, walk around all the enclosures, and clean the dishes. Then it is back to the house for breakfast - 3 days a week this is a cooked breaky waiting for you when you get back!
The morning then consists of some sort of work around the project. Today's job was fully cleaning out the mice, rats and rabbits that are kept and bred onsite. These form part of the servals' diet, though at the moment they are eating chicks instead while the rat and mouse population is built up. Having kept mice and rats as pets I found it a little difficult to keep removed from thinking too hard about why they were there - caring for something like a pet that is being kept purely as food is something I find a little challenging!
After a break for an hour or so for lunch, we went for a walk to the dam to see if it had filled much with all the rain that there has been - the levels were much higher so it proved how wet it's been lately! Then onto the normal afternoon programme - cheetah time :) This is just where the volunteers (with a member of staff) get to sit with the cheetahs and just hang out and spend time with them. Today we were back with Nala and Jasmine for a while then we visited Jade as well. As an added bonus we witnessed two cheetahs mating- not something you see every day! Trigger is on loan to try and get some of the females pregnant. Jasmine is expecting late march, and today he was in with Tessa and mated with her as well. There is a chance that Nala is also pregnant, so there are high hopes for quite a number of cubs in the near future!
After cheetah time the last job of the day is feeding. We prepare the meat and feed all the cats their dinner. After cleaning up the cheetah kitchen that's it for the day and it's in for dinner and relaxing for the evening.
I have some more photos to share but will have to put them in a separate post using my phone. Watch this space!
Hi miss lennon.
ReplyDeleteI hope your having wonderful and exciting time in africa.
Praying that the wifi gets better soon so you can post more awesome photo's.
what's your favourite type of breed of cheetah.
Oh! how old is the oldest cat.
bye.
Hi William, the wifi works ok though I think it will be temperamental the whole time I'm here! Luckily it is working well enough for me to keep updating and I will post as many photos as possible :)
DeleteAs I said in another comment, I think I've been a bit confusing in what I've written because there is just one breed of cheetah. In fact, cheetahs have a very small genetic diversity and all cheetahs across the whole world are actually related! This is partly why they are so endangered, because if they get hit by disease it is likely most of the population would get wiped out :(
The oldest cat here is Penny who is about 14. She is the only one not hand raised from a baby so they are not sure of her exact age. She is still doing very well! They only live 4-7 years in the wild!