Mother and Cubs Release, International Conservation Biology Course and More

We just released the female that came in the week I got home a couple of weeks ago. She had two cubs about a year old. She had a broken rear toe and a broken canine tooth. We had her toe amputated and took her to the dentist. She looked great when we released her. She and the cubs put on weight and we feel really good about her freedom. Since it’s calving time for the wildlife, there will be hartebeest and oryx calves everywhere. This will give them an opportunity for plenty of game.

Sjaak from Beeske Bergen was here and his wife Christine with a film crew, so they got to film the release. Also there was a German film crew here and filmed it too.

We worked on Klein on as well – he has what we think is a fungal growth on his left front and rear legs. So, we took scraping and biopsy and won’t know for ~ 2 weeks, as it takes that long to run the culture.

We performed an artificial insemination on Uschi yesterday and again today. It’s a surgical technique where you put the thawed sperm into the horns of the uterus. We bred our Anatolian female Uschi to Zor’s sperm donated by the Rare Breeds Ranch in the US. Everything went smoothly, so we are hoping for the best. We do have a pregnancy test for dogs and should have access to an ultrasound to test for the success of the breeding.

Today begins our International Conservation Biology Course – there will be ~20 professional conservation biologists coming from 8 cheetah range countries. The planning has kept us busy and we are all looking forward to the course. After we spend 2 days in Windhoek – they will join us at CCF’s Centre. It’s a really great group and think that the course will be good.

I hope that you all have a very Happy Thanksgiving. I’m going to try to make a Namibian rendition of Thanksgiving!