Celebrity hippo’s penchant for rooibos

Meet Jessica the Hippo – one of the world’s most famous animal stars. She’s played the lead in several National Geographic documentaries, appeared on the Discovery Channel, SKY news, BBC, Japanese, German and Australian telly and even made it onto the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Annually, thousands of tourists flock to the 6ha reserve in Hoedspruit, situated along the Blyde River to catch a glimpse of Jessica.

Her favourite snack is homegrown Rooibos, and she eagerly gulps down 20 litres a day.

Honorary game ranger Tonie Joubert and his wife Shirley raised Jessica since she was a calf. They rescued her during the devastating floods that ravaged parts of Mozambique and South Africa in the year 2000.

“Shortly after being born, Jessica must have been swept downstream and thankfully, we found her still alive and intact on the banks of the Blyde River, near our home,” Tonie recalls.

“When we got to her, she was weak and exhausted by the ordeal. She had no energy. Realising that she needed help, I picked her up and saw she was only a few hours old as she still had the umbilical cord attached to her.

“She needed milk urgently, but being so small, we couldn’t feed her cow’s milk. I quickly prepared a formula, which consisted of egg yolk, cream and full-cream cow’s milk to create a substitute for colostrum. To our surprise, she took to the teat of the bottle greedily, and could hardly get enough of my formula.”

At 16kg and 30cm tall at the shoulder, it was the smallest hippo they had ever seen. Over a 24hour period she had to consume 10% her body mass in milk (1.6 litres). “Jessica’s chances of survival in the wild were very slim and we realised that it would be far more merciful to see the journey through, than to just let nature take its course, and so she became part of our family,” says Shirley. When the time came to wean Jessica, they experimented with various teas, but the only one she took to was Rooibos.

“To this day, she’ll only drink Rooibos and prefers to take it warm with a bit of brown sugar. She has it for breakfast, lunch and supper, and always nudges us for it just before bedtime. It helps her to fall peacefully asleep on the veranda with our five English bull terriers – her very best mates.”

For more information on Jessica the Hippo and/or Rooibos’ health benefits visit http://www.jessicahippo.com/ and www.sarooibos.co.za