Rescued jackal pups thriving at CROW

Durban’s Centre for Rehabilitation of Wildlife (CROW) is home to nine energetic and highly dependent rescued jackal puppies.

Four of the pups were rescued in Empangeni, while the remaining five were rescued in Salt Rock a few weeks ago.

Charged with the challenging task of caring for the puppies, CROW’s Sue-Ann Schutte said they are quite a handful and demand total devotion at this early stage in their development.

“All nine pups are happy, healthy and doing very well, but as wild animals, they require specialist care,” said Schutte, who is thrilled to be the pups’ surrogate mother, but being nocturnal said they are exhausting.

The four pups from Empangeni are 12-weeks-old and need to be fed twice a day, while the five pups from Salt Rock are just eight-weeks-old and require feeding three times a day.

The Salt Rock pups were rescued by Salt Rock resident and owner of the Litchi Orchard, Paul Eb, who discovered a man selling the five jackals on the side of the road.

Eb said that he did not pay for them as he did not want to encourage the illegal sale of wild animals and took them in to CROW on September 22.

Schutte said the puppies are still fed with milk at this stage, but they are also being given a meal-worm substitute as wild jackals would already be eating insects caught around their den at this young age.

“Jackal pups typically depend on the full-time care of their mother for between six and eight months, so they will be in my care for the same amount of time before we release them back into the wild,” said Schutte.

It is also important that the puppies interact only with Schutte because they bond so deeply with their carer, so staff at CROW are limiting their exposure to people to give them the best fighting chance when they are released.

CROW director, Claire Hodgkinson, said the pups’ rehabilitation process is a long and complex one because of the importance of identifying a safe site for these animals to be released as they are increasingly coming into conflict with humans.

“Our immediate focus at present is on meeting the pups’ developmental needs and in this respect, we are very lucky to have Sue-Ann on our staff, who as one of our professional wildlife rehabilitators, has many years of experience.

The centre said it is in desperate need of help from the public as the cost of keeping and taking care of the jackal puppies is too high for them to manage alone.

Milk formula is especially expensive.

A variety of donation options are available on the CROW website: crowkzn.co.za.

For further information either email the centre at info@crowkzn.co.za or call on 031-4621127.

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