From the day Riana founded Cheetah Experience, her dream has always been to see her animals in the wild. However, releasing an animal requires a lot of time, effort and money. For this reason, we are proud to finally inform you that we have successfully released one of our female, adult cheetahs.
Jasmin was born and raised at Cheetah Experience. On the 29th of August 2018, she moved to a National Park in South Africa, called Kuzuko. She was initially kept in a smaller holding boma inside the park. A month later she underwent a soft release into a 300 ha. camp. Only 8 days after being released into the bigger camp, she made her first kill. Jasmin has been hunting ever since, with many hunts being succesful.
In other words, Riana's dream finally came true. And her dream doesn't end here. There is much more to be done. As said before, releasing an animal costs a lot of money. And this is exactly the reason why we have to thank every single one of you. This wouln't have been possible without your support and we are so grateful that you made this possible for us and the animals. Every bit helps and together we can work on a better future for these animals!
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Thanks to your donations, we were able to give certain animals some much needed medical care!
On the 26th of May, our Canadian wolf Nikita didn't seem to be doing very well. She was sedated by Dr. Sandra Bertram and X-rays showed severe pneumonia and fluid in her lungs. She was on medication for a while and received around the clock care. However, she was very sick. Thanks to the good care of Dr. Bertram, Nikita managed to pull through and she is now back to her old self.
Our older cheetah boys James and Mafusa were also sedated to do some check-ups. Mafusa has a bad hip due to an injury when he was younger, but all looks very good. As for James, his blood results couldn't have been better so he's also doing really well.
Our stories unfortunately don't always have a happy ending. We would like to tell you about a steenbok that was brought in on the 1st of October. She seemed to have been hit by a car and couldn't stand up. When we sedated her, it turned out she was severly hurt but also pregnant. Not long after, she went into labour and her baby, whom we named Hope, was born. Unfortunately, his mum was too badly hurt to save and had to be euthanised. Baby Hope was premature but seemed to be doing really well. After 10 days of doing everything we possibly could for him, he started to struggle and unfortunately passed away. He was a little fighter though and will never be forgotten.
However, all of this wouldn't have been possible without your help! Cheetah Experience would like to thank you all very much for your donations. Without your help, our project simply wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be able to take care of our animals like we do. Thank you so much for allowing us to put our animals first, always!
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A huge thank you to all our supporters for your donations. You don't know how important your help is. We have been struggling a lot lately to source good fresh meat for our animals. It is very expensive but to us very important for the health of our animals. Some of our cats struggled with gastritis and therefore we are giving them the best meat possible. One feeding for our animals is around R2000 per day and depending on the availability it go up to R3000 per day. This roughly works out to about R60000.00 per month if we don't get meat donated. Your help keep the animals healthy and we have a bit of peace of mind. Please keep the animals in your thoughts and lets give them the best care.
We also had medical checks on Legacy. We took xrays of her legs, darted Shakran to do blood tests and also did a fulle medical examination on Gabriel.
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Over the last few months, we've had some cheetahs struggling with their health. Thanks to your generous donations, we were able to give our cheetahs the best medical care possible!
On the 29th of January, we found our boy Shakran unresponsive in his enclosure. We immediately rushed him to the vet, who did an MRI and several tests. The results showed that Shakran has an enlarged heart and some spots on his liver, but none of this could be the cause of the seizures he apparenlty had been having. The scans of his brain didn't show any abnormalities though so the vet blamed his seizures on his old age. He's now getting seizure medication twice a day and is doing very well.
Only 6 days later, we went to check on Jasmin and found her with her paw covered in blood. We had no choice but sedate her to have a closer look at it. It turned out she ripped her paw open and needed stitches. The vet did an amazing job and her paw healed very quickly!
Our last story is a very sad one unfortunately. Our beloved cheetah Dew had been struggling with her health for a while. Over the last few weeks, we could tell she was feeling unwell because she wasn't really herself. The vet had a look at her and found out her kidneys were failing. It wasn't a question of if, it was a question of when. We did everything in our power to make Dew's last days as comfortable as possible. She was put down eventually, in the presence of the one she loved the most, René. No words can describe how much our Dew will be missed. We will make sure she will never be forgotten but it will take us a long time to even begin to heal from this heartbreaking loss.
We want to thank you all for donating because taking care of our cheetahs wouldn't be possible without you. This project couldn't exist without all of you and we are eternally grateful for your help.
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As you know, we are a non profit organisation and so far, we've always been lucky enough to get meat donated for our animals. In the past few months we've been struggling to get meat donations. To ensure our animals receive proper nutrition and care, we have had to purchase large quantities of red meat for our animals. Your generous donations have gone towards the purchasing of meat for our animals, and they are extremely extremely grateful!
Not only have we had some trouble with sourcing meat, we've also been dealing with some cheetahs struggling with their health. One of our beloved cheetahs Aloe had to be rushed to the vet when we found her completely unresponsive one day. The vet told us she had had a seizure so we gave her medication and had someone keeping an eye on her at all time. Aloe battled with seizures for months, having up to 10 seizures a day, and after many tests, no cause was found. Her condition deteriorated rapidly and after more tests, dead spots were found on Aloe's brain, causing the seizures. We had no choice but let her go. Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do for her but we miss our girl every day.
Also, one morning we found one of our other beautiful cheetahs Adamu not putting his paw down. Again, we went straight to the vet, who told us he must've got his paw stuck somewhere. He ripped a lot of skin off and there was almost nothing left to stitch it back up. He got medication and it took him a few days, but fortunately he recovered completely eventually.
As you can see, your donations make a massive difference in our animals lives. All the staff and animals thank you so much for your continued support!
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