Apart from the plentiful plains game that can be found on Mahela Group farms, Mahela breeds some of the rarer game species with the aim of conserving and improving these game genetics. These include lion, roan, sable, kudu, nyala, reedbuck, buffalo, black impala and bushbuck.

Mahela Group owns and market game under the name ‘Mahela Game’ as well as through a 50% partnership in BJ Vorster. BJ Vorster, in turn, markets its game as a member of Benchmark Game Breeders. Benchmark Game Breeders’ annual auction is a highlight on South Africa’s game auction calendar, with animals regularly selling for record prices.

As part of the Gravelotte Study Group, Mahela co-founded a sable breeding project in 1998 to improve the genetic pool of the region’s sable. This saw the inclusion of the highly sought-after Western Zambian sable specie into our breeding programme. At the start of 2018, BJ Vorster owned three sable bulls with horns measuring more than 50”.