News

8 January 2010

New Year Arrival at Woburn Safari Park

Woburn Safari Park celebrated the start of the New Year with the safe arrival of a new female Rothschild Giraffe.

Baby Giraffe - Keira

Born during the early hours of New Years Day, the new calf has been named Keira. In 2010 all new babies born in the reserves will be called a name beginning with the letter ‘K’; the 11th letter of the alphabet to coincide with the 11th year of the century. Keira is the first calf to mum Frankie, who herself was born at Woburn in 2005.

Woburn’s head of animal management and conservation, Dr Jake Veasey who is an experienced giraffe biologist having worked with them in the wild in Zimbabwe, commented on the birth; “We’re very pleased to be welcoming Keira to Woburn so early into the New Year. We expect at least three or four more giraffe this year which will make us possibly the most successful breeder of these highly endangered and beautiful animals anywhere in the world.”

Woburn Safari Park celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2010. In recent years Woburn has revolutionised the management of giraffe in captivity. Woburn has a unique programme of ensuring a natural leaf based diet is provided all year round for its giraffe and has developed a novel approach to the management of the giraffe birthing process based on Jake’s experiences of giraffe in other zoos and in the wild. This combined with the recent expansion and redevelopment of the giraffe house has facilitated dramatic improvements in the success of Woburn’s giraffe programme. In the past six years, Woburn has planted 10,000 trees specifically to provide leaves for their giraffe herd based on ancient wildlife-friendly coppice management systems. In the summer, leaves are collected from plantations on the 3000 acre estate and fed to the giraffes each day; the surplus meanwhile is stored for the winter months. Woburn is the only zoo in Europe that can guarantee its giraffes a supply of fresh leaves 365 days a year.

Population estimates for the Rothschild giraffe vary from just 40 to a couple of hundred in the wild. It is named after Lord Walter Rothschild who was the first to identify it as a new subspecies as the male has five horns (known as ossicones) on its head – two more than other species.

During much of the winter season the giraffe at Woburn remain closer to their house due to the cold weather and the risk of slipping on ice, but can still be seen from the drive-through Safari route. In summer they have 24 hour access to large grass paddocks, which they share with the endangered Grevy’s Zebra.