Baby Giraffe Gets off on The Wrong Foot

I’m Dr. Micky Trent, I am the Veterinary at Como Zoo through the University of Minnesota. I am also a large animal surgeon on staff as faculty. This is our little giraffe baby that was born last week sometime between Monday night and Tuesday morning. He unfortunately got off to a really ruff start, initially he could not hold his head up, he couldn’t stand up, if he did try and stand up, he’d struggle and fall. So he needed help and he needed around the clock attendance because he was getting all of his nutrition in through his vein. But now that he’s up and is feeling feisty, he’s even more fun but a little more challenging. He was born in the Como Zoo and we have had several calves that are born, that have a little starting problem and the Como Zoo staff is great, they’re able to handle most of those problems; but he had science of circulating infection or Septicemia and was not showing any science of his insistence moving which meant that he needed intensive 24hour care. He has been here since Thursday of last week. We realized that we’re not going to be able to manage him successfully at the Zoo and he has been steadily progressing, now we’ve been able to wean him off of the intravenous fluids we will be pulling his cuspidor today. He’s now drinking milk out of a bucket and getting pretty close to be able to maintain his normal intake just orally which is what we need. Veterinary school our primarily clients are horses, which we see now up at the piper clinic, which is specially designed for horses. We also see a wide range of domestic animals, Caudles, Lamas, Alpacas. We have an Alpaca and a Goat in now and then we have the odds and ends that will come in. We do provide some care for exotics. It’s the best part of my job yeah! I’m actually trained originally as a surgeon large animal surgeon, so this animal is a good cross over for me. Laughter!!!