"Cheetah Husbandry" is a Very Official Sounding Job

This morning, I FINALLY got to join in on cheetah husbandry: aka feeding all the captive cheetahs here at CCF. There are quite a lot of them.

But before I could feed cheetahs, we had to go get the meat. And as is the theme around here, it wasn’t ready. So we waited in the slaughter enclosure while they cut up big chunks. There were two fully grown dead donkeys hanging upside-down from hooks in the ceiling with all their skin cut off except for around their heads. You could see all the muscle and blood and such, but it actually didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. Even when Kristi (another intern) and I were tasked with cutting up larger, still warm, chunks into bit sized ones for the older cats who couldn’t eat as well. I was fine; it was like cutting up strips of raw chicken after you’ve put it in the microwave for a minute.

We started off with some of the older cats in their enclosure. There is this one cheetah named Klein who has hepatitis on his legs and is missing a lot of teeth. We had to pay special attention to him and squirt antibiotics on his legs through the fence. He wasn’t too happy about it, but it will keep him from licking the infected areas. There were I believe four other cats at that enclosure. I think they keep all the ones who need special pills or powders hidden in their meat in that enclosure. In other words, the older cats.

The next group we fed was the newest cubs. I overheard that one boy is called Donner and one of the girls is Skeet, but I could be mistaken. That feeding actually took us the longest because those cubs are still really wild and they really don’t trust people. We had to be very quiet and pretty much just stay out of the way while Juliette fed them very cautiously. They were growling the entire time we were there!

The next set was the seven girls and five boys who live nearest the facility. We first ran the boys, but we didn’t use a lure. Oh no. Kristi, Juliette (the head cheetah keeper), and I hopped into the back of the truck and James (the cheetah keeper who’s leaving tomorrow) drove into the enclosure. He drove probably at highway speeds down the enclosure while the cheetahs chased us and we hung on for dear life. I’m actually not sure why I was in the back other than for the experience of watching a pack of cheetahs running after us. Which was rather exciting. Juliette threw the meat to them after a couple laps around the pen.

After that, it was a half an hour ride to Belabino farm (one of CCF’s farms) to feed these two ADORABLE cubs and then a bit further to feed another set of boys and girls (six girls, five boys, I think). We ran them both! The boys were all named after scientists. That was lots of fun. On the way to the enclosures, we took the middle road past a few watering holes and I saw zebra, giraffes, kudu, warthogs, cows, and lots of birds! It was really cool! However, we were working so I couldn’t stop and take pictures.

But cheetah husbandry wasn’t the only fun thing today! This morning, while we were raking and weeding pens while waiting for Juliette to start the cheetah feeding; they ran the OK cubs with a lure for the first time ever! They were SO funny. To run the cheetahs, Rachel, Ron, and Juliette (some more senior staff/ volunteers) hooked a rag onto a pulley system and attached it to a battery. When switched on, the rag can travel at 70k/hr on the line, and cheetahs instinctually run after fast moving objects. (Which is why we are not really allowed to run here that much) It’s not as fast as a cheetah can run, but fast enough to give the cubs some exercise. Despite the fact that their instincts told them to chase the red cloth, they weren’t very good at running yet. They could run, obviously, but they couldn’t manage the turns (the lure line is set up in a square shape), and so they just kept barreling right past on the corners. Also, when the lure wasn’t going as fast, they would run in this pouncy/ hoppy/ running sort of way that was ADORABLE. Also, they weren’t quite used to the lure yet, so they kept tripping over the line that the cloth was on. It was so hilarious to see them trip over their own paws. (They were fine, that’s why it was so funny.)

After lunch (in which Kristi thought it was weird that I ate plain pasta), I started the “Casey’s Slave” part of the day. Officially, it’s General Tasks with Casey or Santa supervising (yes, Santa is her real name), but it generally amounts to doing data entry or sticking labels on things. Something that I am now an expert at. It’s actually hard for Casey to find stuff for us to do since a lot of it is special stuff that would take either forever to explain or we don’t have enough CCF knowledge/ specifics to do… So we interns on data entry duty take it project by project and try to find things to do as they come.

Anyways! Today was an awesome day, though my hands still smell a bit like donkey blood despite washing them. But it doesn’t bother me too much. Tschuss!

(ps- that means “bye!” in German… actually, any website I visit is in german the first couple of tries… like… Blogspot.)