TWO serval kittens have been given a second chance thanks to a group of farm workers and the staff of the Centre for Rehabilitation of Wildlife (CROW).
On Tuesday, 25 August the two kittens were found by farm workers in Vryheid. Despite their efforts to search for the mother, they were unsuccessful.
The workers took the animals to the farm owner who contacted CROW, then drove to Durban to hand them over.
The servals, now named Sumo and Senzi, were about one-week-old. They were dehydrated and stressed when they arrived and were still learning how to walk. CROW staff put them on a specialised formula containing the nutrients they needed.
“They have now been placed into the expert care of our clinic manager, Estie Allan, who is well versed in hand-rearing young servals. The most crucial part of their rehabilitation is ensuring they don’t get habituated to humans. The fact that there are two of them does make this process a little easier as you can leave them to keep each other company.
Estie has to carefully balance the youngsters bottle feeds, which at this stage are every five hours, with the consistent monitoring they need at this stage of their development.
Estie has just introduced solids to their diet and they are growing at a healthy and normal rate. Within the next month or so they will be transferred into their very own enclosure in our ICU block,” said CROW marketing and communications officer, Paul Hoyte.
