Vetnews | Februarie 2025 24 « BACK TO CONTENTS All CVC’s try to do a lot each year, and to make a difference in their area. The Cluny Animal Trust is based in the eastern Free State, and we cover a geographical area what is +/- 12 000 km² - which is pretty big and roughly the same size as England in the UK. As a team, we try to pick one thing to focus on and we set ourselves a target each year, but the ultimate aim is always to improve the lives of as many animals and their owners as possible. In 2024, we were thrilled to have a CCS vet (Dr Karla Olivier) placed with us and so we decided to make that focus area, sterilisations. We set ourselves an ambitious target of 1000 steris, and we are thrilled to announce that we did it, actually sterilising 1033 animals in total for the year. Truth be told, this is the most sterilisations we have ever done in a single year, and with such a small veterinary team we have learnt that we do need to manage our time closely. We reached these numbers through dedicated outreach work, getting to smaller communities that do not have access to any veterinary services at all and taking our team along with Daisy, our mobile operating theatre for sterilisation and vaccination weekends. In total, we spent 18 days doing this kind of weekend outreach work in 2024 and a total of 496 sterilisations can be attributed just to these 18 outreach days. Each week we have a dedicated surgery day (Wednesdays) but these surgery days really can include anything and everything and the rest of the sterilisations were made of animals from our local communities. In addition to our surgery days, we also ran a number of low-cost sterilisation days to help local people (not from township communities) to spay and neuter their pets at a reduced rate, we felt this was important given the state of the economy, and we can report that each of these steri days were well received and supported. Sterilisation remains a key focus area for the Cluny Animal Trust as we head into 2025. v An initiative of the SOUTH AFRICAN VETERINARY ASSOCIATION Non-profit Company: 1998/016654/08 Non-profit Organisation: 000-234 NPO Public Benefit Organisation: 130001321 CVC News I CVC Nuus CVC Magic - 1033 Animals Sterilised in 2024! Photo of Nico Mahlohla (AWA), Dr Karla Olivier (2024 CCS Veterinarian), Dr Elsa van Biljon (Principal Veterinarian) and Jan Sander (AWA) Principal veterinarian, Dr Elsa van Biljon in action By Imogen Tarita, Trustee and Volunteer, Cluny Animal Trust (Eastern Free State)
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