Baby Giraffe: It's a Girl! Says Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Of Their Newest Family Member

April, schmapril. While April the giraffe in New York was getting Jennifer Aniston-type coverage for her pregnancy, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, Colorado, continued to show the way.

On Tuesday night, the zoo saw the birth of its 199th calf since 1954. And on Thursday, the zoo announced the baby is a girl!

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The calf is the second offspring for mom Msitu (pronounced miss-ee-TOO) and the third to be sired by dad, Khalid (pronounced cull-EED). The calf joins the zoo's existing herd of 16 giraffe.

The giraffe building will be closed today to allow mom and baby some quiet time to bond and nurse. The rest of their herd will be available for viewing and feeding in the outside yard, weather permitting. Assuming that mom and baby are nursing consistently, the public will be allowed some limited viewing opportunities starting tomorrow.

"Msitu was a great mom to her first calf, Emy, so she knew exactly what to do when this baby was born," said Amy Schilz, animal care manager. "Since mom and baby appear to be healthy, our vet team has not needed to intervene. It's best to let nature take its course."

The sex, weight and height of the calf is not known yet.

The zoo says that when they're born, giraffe calves are typically 5 to 6 feet tall and 150 to 200 pounds. This calf appears to be within those healthy parameters, according to the zoo.

The calf will be named when he or she is 30 days old.

Msitu was pregnant for between 15 and 16 months.

The zoo says that everything was fairly by the book since Msitu was also born at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and has grown up in the culture of voluntary husbandry training.

"This means that she voluntarily participates in her own health care, which fosters a strong trust relationship between keeper and animal," zoo officials said.

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is considered a leader in the training and health of giraffes in human care, but they are also making a huge difference in conservation of giraffes in the wild.

The status of giraffes was recently changed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (Ifrom “least concern” to “vulnerable,” acknowledging the fact that their population in the wild has plummeted by 40 percent in the last 30 years.

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo has partnered with the Giraffe Conservation Foundation to support much-needed field research on the different giraffe subspecies and to help with multiple conservation strategies.

Last year, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s guests and members used their Quarters for Conservation admission contributions to send $26,000 to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and its efforts to help the Rothschild’s giraffes in Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda.

That funding was part of the zoo's provided financial support — along with a staff veterinarian — to help Operation Twiga.

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s head veterinarian, Dr. Liza Dadone, recently returned from a trip to Uganda. While there, she assisted a diverse veterinary team with Operation Twiga, a project aimed at translocating 18 Rothschild’s giraffes from the northern part of Murchison Falls National Park to the southern part.

The operation was imperative to establish a population of Rothschild's giraffes back into a historic home range, where they had lived 200 years ago. The project was timed before a potential new threat to the last remaining Rothschild’s giraffe – oil exploration through the northern part of Murchison Falls National Park.

Moving this assurance population to an area with fewer threats will hopefully help stabilize the population of this subspecies in the wild.

"Giraffe have faced a 35% decline in population in the last 15 years – there are now only about 80,000 giraffe remaining in the wild," Dadone said. "Rothschild's giraffe are one of the most critically endangered subspecies of giraffe, with only 1,500 remaining in the wild; of those, almost the entire population currently live in Murchison Falls National Park."

Photos courtesy Cheyenne Mountain Zoo