Khanyisa and the Jabulani Herd – Orphaned elephant Timisa enjoying the attention

Beautiful light and sweet moments shared in the wild, in today’s integration video.

For our new followers – Khanyisa is an orphaned albino elephant calf who was rescued in early January from a terrible snare. She underwent intense rehabilitation and treatment for the first two months in our care.

During that time, she communicated and shared many beautiful moments through the dividing fence with the neighbouring Jabulani herd of elephants, as part of her initial integration steps.

Once Adine (our founder) and our veterinary team had successfully healed her deep wounds from the snare that wrapped itself around her face, ears and neck, we decided to introduce her to the Jabulani herd gradually.

Almost three months into the integration, she is spending most of her mornings now with the Herd as they spend their days out in the reserve foraging. This is so important as she learns essential elephant behaviour.

Her adoptive mother is Lundi, (the great aunt of the Herd), while Bubi has taken an influential role in her Khanyisa’s life too, as an allomother. Kumbura (also an orphaned elephant accepted into the Jabulani herd in 2009) is equally as prominent, but she is not natural at “nursing” as she has not had babies of her own. As it is not part of our objectives at HERD to breed with elephants, they are on contraception, and therefore the cows are not lactating. HERD will continue to provide Khanyisa with her milk until she is weaned between the ages of 4- 5 years old. However, Khanyisa gets great emotional comfort from the action of suckling.

Timisa (who was loving the attention in this video) is the youngest of the Jabulani Herd, having been “adopted” by them lovingly in 2016 too. She is forming a charming, playful and sisterly role in Khanyisa’s new journey.

Over the past 2 – 3 months of lockdown, Adine (founder of HERD and MD of Jabulani), together with passionate elephant carers, has spent every day with Khanyisa and the Jabulani Herd, observing their integration closely. Adine takes lots of little video snippets with her phone of the highlights to share with our followers. That is the lady’s voice you often her chatting in the background during their days in the bush!

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