Cape Town - A baby rhino who was abandoned by his mother is being hand-reared at a reserve outside Cape Town by a team of carers who are with him 24/7 - even snuggling up with him at night.
And his best friend is a goat called Bokkie who was brought in to teach the little rhino calf how to graze.
Named Osita, which is of Nigerian origin and means “from today onwards it will be better”, the white rhino calf was rescued soon after being born on New Year’s Eve last year when his mother mistook another calf for her own and abandoned him.
Divan Grobler, conservation manager at the Aquila Game Reserve near Touws River, who was part of the team who found him, said they tried to re-introduce the calf to his mother the next morning but she walked away.
“Then the dad came and when Osita tried to suckle on him he got aggressive.”
Grobler said by then 12 hours had passed and the calf was dehydrated, so they took the decision to hand-rear him.
“We were worried because he’d been through so much stress, but from day one he had such a fighting spirit.
“He’s such an inquisitive fellow and so intelligent.”
At five months he now weighs 440kg and drinks 50 litres of horse milk formula a day.
“His last feed is at midnight and then again at 5am,” Grobler says.
“But he sometimes gets restless and I’m often woken up before then with a mouth over my face He tries to suckle and makes these little clicking noises.”
Bokkie the goat came from a local farmer.
“She was very scared when she arrived with these big eyes. Now they are two peas in a pod. And if he goes somewhere without her she screams blue murder.”
Osita is walked twice a day for about one and a half hours at a time to build up his strength. He loves his outings almost as much as his red and pink fleece blanket which he cuddles when he sleeps.
“He’s quite gentle,” says Shannon Westphal, a wildlife rehabilitator who sleeps alongside the rhino in the boma at night.
They all sleep on straw bales with blankets with just a heat lamp to keep off the Karoo chill.
“He usually sleeps well but sometimes he gets a little rebellious and wants to go outside at night.”
Westphal, who was trained by rhino rehabilitation specialist Karen Trendler at Thula Thula in KwaZulu-Natal, said Osita will still be bottle-fed for another 18 months before being weaned.
Then, when he is two and a half to three years old, they will undertake what they call a “soft-release” where he will be placed in a boma near the herd so they can smell him but he can still be monitored.
Westphal said rhinos rehabilitated quite easily.
“Once they stop needing the bottle they stop needing you.”
Grobler says the rest of the herd will still see him as an infant so will accept him.
His carers have developed an extremely strong bond with the little rhino and are fiercely protective of him.
The reserve had several rhinos attacked by poachers in 2011 so they know only too well how vulnerable the animals are when targeted by ruthless syndicates.
“Looking after Osita has brought that even closer to home,” said Grobler.
Cape Argus