There are rumours that there are two breeding cheetah mothers on our reserve at the moment. One was seen a few days ago, with two cubs, and we keep seeing one with 5 cubs. We saw her again yesterday! We spotted her with 4 cubs, as you can see on the photos, so I am wondering where the 5th one is. Has she lost it? Or was it hiding away? It would be tragic if she has lost one, but very normal in nature. Survival rates of cheetah cubs are ultra-low (death rate varies from 50-75%). The fact that she has gotten so many cubs to this stage is already a statistical miracle. She is doing so well, and what amazing news for the conservation efforts here on this conservancy! Cheetahs are chronically hard to introduce to a conservancy, and to get them to reproduce. I suspect that some cheetahs on our reserve either came in on their own, or they were already there before. There were tracks of cheetahs already here many years ago, but we never saw any.

The two brothers we often see with guests were born on the reserve, and they are very relaxed when we see them on safari. It is obvious that this mother is already passing on this behavior to her offspring, so that will make for even more amazing cheetah sightings going forward. I couldn’t be more excited about this development, it just shows how much private game reserves such as ours can do to move the needle in a significant manner when it comes to ensuring the long-term survival of these rare cats. Only 550-800 specimen are estimated to still live in the wild in South Africa, so to have two cheetahs breeding successfully at the same time, in the wild, on their own, that’s just truly thrilling news.