Bellebenno

My daily routine now consists of two major scat walks (through the two Eland enclosures) and a scat drive (around the 57ha Bellebenno camp). These are the three camps in which the cheetahs are being fed marked food, such that we are able to identify their poop just by looking at it (or pulling it apart as is most often the case). The Bellebenno farm is a piece of property that used to be a game farm, but was acquired by CCF to be used for “soft releases”. There are plenty of oryx, eland, giraffe, zebra, kudu, warthogs, etc inside of the Bellebenno farm. Also inside, are three cheetah “enclosures”, one of which is the 57 hectare camp that is home to 8 mid-aged female cheetahs. These girls are practically wild, because they only see humans once a day when they are fed. I get to be one of those humans and I love it. Every time we drive through the Bellebenno farm property to head to the cheetah camp is like going on a game drive. Yesterday I saw an aardvark!! Amazing. No photo to prove it, but it was epic. After we feed the girls, we take a drive around the fenceline and these girls are so fabulous that we usually find scat (aka. poop) from at least 6 of the 8 on any given day. Considering the vast amount of space we don’t search, this is incredible. Today, we found samples from all 8 girls. A fabulous day.

Because of my project, I get to be on cheetah husbandry every day, and I work directly with either the head cheetah keeper, Juliette, or the assistant cheetah keeper, Ryan. They have both been so amazing considering the amount of extra work that was put on their daily plate because of my project. Major acknowledgements will be required. I have so many samples already from the three camps I have no idea if I will fit everything into the coolers I brought. Things have been so successful I really could not have wished for things to go better. I will be sad when these first few weeks are over and I am not longer on husbandry daily… although we need to start collecting from some males too (so I can’t head to the genetics lab just yet): right now Phoenix is the only one! I’ve got my eye on “the scientists”. J

Here’s my best cheetah photo from today: