When rangers found the calf in Tsavo West National Park, he was only about a day old and completely alone.
Park rangers from the Tsavo Trust and Kenya Wildlife Service came across the newborn black rhino on September 6, 2023. They estimated he had likely been born prematurely, and his mother was nowhere in sight.
“It was a miracle that hyenas, jackals, or other predators hadn’t already snatched him,” the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust wrote. “He had obviously been on his own for a significant time, as he had started to become hypoglycemic and shaky. It was clear, without sustenance and rapid attention, he would die.”
Rangers approved a rescue by the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a conservation group in Kenya that rescues and rehabilitates orphaned animals. He was taken to the Kaluku Neonate Nursery in the Tsavo ecosystem, the same habitat where he was born.
“He was just a day old when he was rescued, so for all intents and purposes, we are the only family he has ever known,” the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust said.
The calf was named Chamboi. In 2024, Angela Sheldrick, CEO of Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, wrote about his early rehabilitation in field notes.
“Chamboi’s favorite place to sleep is by his keepers’ sides, his eyes closed in bliss as they rub his tummy,” Sheldrick wrote.
His first months were difficult. Chamboi was separated from his mother so quickly that he missed out on the nutrient-rich colostrum a nursing mother provides. The trust said he struggled with a long list of stomach issues for a long time.
After his molars came in, he was able to eat leafy greens, which helped him gain needed weight. As he grew stronger, Sheldrick described him as “animated and flighty” as he moved around the sanctuary.
“His preferred gait is a skip, he seems to levitate as he races his keepers through the bush,” she wrote.
Sheldrick said rhinos are drawn to routine, and Chamboi shows that clearly.
“He is obsessed with one particular blanket, a woollen, cherry red number, and flatly refuses to wear anything else,” she wrote. “Tsavo can get very hot, but infant rhinos are fragile, much like elephants, and need to be shielded from even the slightest chill in the air.”
Chamboi also formed an unusual bond in his first year with two orphaned ostrich chicks, Bam and Boozle.
“Bam and Boozle immediately took a shine to Chamboi. He had very little say in the matter, they simply started following him from sunup to sundown!” Sheldrick said. “They make an unlikely troupe, the stout rhino and the gangly birds … they go everywhere together, from the airstrip to the mud bath, to the bush and back home again.”
He is also being raised alongside Raha, another black rhino orphaned at an early age. The trust said both are still too young to live in the wild. When they reach 5 years of age, they will slowly begin transitioning to a protected nature reserve.
For now, Chamboi is 3 years old and still living with the keepers and other animals around him.
“To know a baby rhino is to fall in love with them,” Sheldrick wrote in her field notes. “My mother, Daphne Sheldrick, used to refer to black rhinos as ‘the last living dinosaurs’, and the epithet rings true, even when it comes to the youngest generation.”
Read more from GoodGoodGood.
