New Cheetah Mum and Cubs

In October we received calls from two seperate farms in Namibia who had both captured a cheetah mother and 3 young cubs by accident and needed them to be relocated and given a safe home. 

The first came on 1st October from a farm next to where Rudie grew up in eastern-central Namibia. The farm is a livestock farm and 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.

Our second cheetah family joined us on 11th October after we received a call from a farm in the Mangetti area in north east Namibia. It is actually the same area as our 13 wild dog pups were found. These cheetahs were living on a hunting farm which for 30 years had never experienced any problems with predators. However, in the last couple of months they've had a lion, 2 leopards and 5 cheetahs come through from neighbouring lands, onto their farm. 


The cheetahs were hunting his re-introduced blesbok (a type of antelope) and unlike the leopard who the landowner killed, he didn't want to kill our cheetah mum because he knew she had 3 cubs. Instead he laid out a capture cage with meat and lured them in. Between the time of capture and our rescue, he took good care of them, giving them food and water and putting the cage in a shaded area to protect them from the hot Namibian sun.

Flo and some volunteers took the long drive to the north of the country and moved the cats from the landowner's capture cage into our transit cage. Fortunately this is very easy to do if the cats are not under too much stress.

On arrival Flo discovered the mother is around 5-8 years old and in prime condition. The cubs are approximately 6 months old and also in very good condition and look healthy.

Once they arrived back at N/a'an ku se later that day, we moved them immediately into our temporary camps where they have ample space. Farm Manager Hardus brought the cage into the camp and slowly released the cage door when they each in turn ran out, led by mum.

Since then the family have kept to one corner of the camp and initially didn't come to the fence for food as we noticed the food was being left. So we moved the water trough we'd set for them closer to the corner of the camp and laid out their meat in that area. The meat is now being eaten and we are slowly moving back towards the front of the fence where usual feeding takes place.

If you'd like to Adopt one of the cheetah cubs and help us provide the food and veterinary care they'll need until they can be re-released, you can do so for just N$700 per year (70 Euros). Email donations@naankuse.com.