Farmyard animals - October update

Our resident meerkats who have been at N/a'an ku se for over a year, including Shaniqua, Violet and her babies, have followed their natural meerkat curiosity and have wandered off into the wide reserve in search of a new home. The group of 8 left the farm a couple of months ago, leaving just one male meerkat here, now named the Lone Ranger.

News from the farmyard animals

Firstly, the meerkats have been on an exploration mission in recent times having been spotted all over the farm and can go for days without a single sighting. However their exploration led to a face to face encounter with a large puff adder. 

Talk about Teamwork!

The group of meerkats recently put their teamwork skills to the test when they spotted a hawk circling high above them whilst they were eating their morning feed. Whilst the meerkats ate their food one of the group kept watch and, after a little while, they swapped over until they had all finished eating and the hawk had given up! The N/a’an ku se meerkat team are a clever little group!

Meanwhile Jessica our old Alpha meerkat has recently moved, with one of the baby meerkats, to our soon to be launched new Carnivore Research and Education Centre in Solitaire. We are hoping Jessica will start a new family of meerkats in this area.

In other farmyard news, both Sylvie and Lily are growing ever more confident and boisterous and can now regularly be found hanging around Food prep scrounging for food or trying to get into the fridge! Sylvie has even discovered the office and has been spotted in the office rummaging through the rubbish bins!



Lily





 

Sylvie

The irrepressible Bella was recently a little under the weather with a suspected virus but fortunately she wasn’t struck down for long and within about 24 hours she was back to her normal busy self! She soon had her full appetite back and has now become a permanent fixture outside food prep just waiting for any scraps, and when she isn’t outside food prep she can be found in the office eating paper directly out of the printer!

Bella and Eddie

Kataya is happily roaming with the wild horses and they can all regularly be heard near the volunteer tents. Clearly they have decided this is where the best grass is!

New Year update from the N/a’an ku sê Farmyard

The Meerkats continue to cause mayhem around the farmyard, particularly now that their numbers have swelled to 15 with the arrival of two new baby meerkats 3 weeks ago.
 
The new meerkat babies and their mother Jessica are currently living in the chicken coop and it seems that the other meerkats are desperate to join them in there as they spend all day digging holes and boroughs all along the chicken coop fence.



It looks like they are trying to stage their own meerkat version of the great escape!



The newly rechristened 'Little Buddha'!

Sylvie is extremely well and is spending more and more time in the garden by the volunteer camp as she has realised that not only can she find some nice shade under the tables

  

She also gets far more attention, and the occasional treat from the volunteers during lunch or dinner - watermelon is her current favourite....but she also seems to have developed a taste for bicycles and so far this week she has munched her way through most of one handle bar and a large chunk of the seat of one of the bicycles on the farm!

Donkey is now living on the other side of the farm, near Hardus' house, with the other Donkeys so she has some company. Day to day life as a Donkey is good and she seems very happy in her new home.

Lily is growing in confidence day by day, and she can currently be found most of the time lying in the shade by the Bushman school. We are convinced that she is in fact keen for some education for herself and so is just waiting for term to start next week when she can then join the children in the classroom for lessons!

Kataya has recently joined on to a group of wild horses who are currently in the area. We are sure that as soon as the wild horse group moves on Kataya will be back and in the meantime she is having a great time roaming around with the wild horses!

Spock is still living at Hardus' house but continually escapes to come back to the farm, much to the fear of our new resident cat here who is terribly frightened of our African cat Spock! Spock chases her all around the lapa and our small cat jumps up onto the roof to hide!