Lincoln Children’s Zoo announces second baby giraffe

Kay is the second baby giraffe to be born at the zoo and came just a month after the arrival of Mosi.

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – The Lincoln Children’s Zoo announced its newest giraffe early Thursday morning.

Kay is the second baby giraffe to be born at the zoo and came just a month after the arrival of Mosi.

Kay was born to dad Joey and first-time mom Allie on Feb. 27.  During the hours after the birth, Allie did not take to Kay as easily as anticipated, and to get her the nutrients she needed, staff decided to begin hand raising her.

Trent Shrader, director of medicine and conservation at the zoo, explained that Kay did not take well to the initial milk replacements that staff provided her.

Throughout the week after her birth, Kay became increasingly ill and needed around-the-clock care to ensure her health and safety.

Staff began giving Kay additional fluids and, with the help of the Henry Doorly Zoo, some plasma from a compatible giraffe in Omaha.  The Lincoln Children’s Zoo then received a tip from a colleague in San Diego that recommended goat milk.

“We arranged to find some goat’s milk from Shadow Brook Farms and were able to offer a bottle of that to her, and she took to it like crazy,” Shrader said. “At that point, she had been very, very ill for several days, had been barely eating anything at all and had some severe infections going on at the same time.  After she was offered that bottle of milk, she actually ate more in the first feeding than she’d eaten for the last three days combined.”

Nikki Page, the lead giraffe keeper at the zoo, said that Kay is thriving and averages two to three pounds of weight gain a day.

She has also begun integrating with the herd and spending time in the day room.

The zoo said Kay’s survival was vital to maintaining the captive giraffe population.  She has particularly rare genes because of her dad’s rare heritage.  Joey is the second-most genetically valuable male in the United States because of his limited family tree.

“When Kay was born, she was born strong,” Page said. “It’s what saved her.”