Less than 24 hours after millions watched live as 15-year-old April the giraffe gives birth to a baby boy Saturday morning, the Animal Adventure Park owner, Jordan Patch, speaks about the giraffe’s successful delivery, Spectrum News reports.
Patch stated that around 9:55 a.m. on April 15, April the giraffe delivered a baby boy after a long-awaited birth. He went on to say that around 7:20 a.m., Animal Adventure Park staff began to notice the starting process of April the giraffe’s delivery, seeing a “sack hanging from the back end.”
Afterward, a zoo spokesperson made an announcement on social media, stating that April the giraffe — an African animal who had been pregnant for 16 months with her fourth calf — was in labor.
The Animal Adventure Park owner was visibly elated, also announcing April the giraffe’s labor via Facebook Live as he was en route to the zoo.
April the giraffe finally gives birth—with a few hundred thousand people watching https://t.co/zokT8xSa18 pic.twitter.com/cWXncb3OUa
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) April 15, 2017
The Animal Adventure Park used Facebook Live to show April the giraffe giving birth where over a million people tuned in.
Just a few hours after April the giraffe paced back and forth with her calf’s hooves and snout hanging from her back end, while inside a pen at the zoo in Harpursville, New York, she was able to successfully give birth to her male calf, who is expected to weigh 150 pounds and stand six feet tall.
“It was an absolutely perfect birthing process, it went exactly as planned,” said Patch, adding that the birth of April’s calf “was unnerving to even those of us who have witnessed animal births previously.”
“Giraffes give birth standing up, which means when the calf is ready to be born, it exits its mother hooves first from six feet off the floor, making for a very exciting event.”
Just 45 minutes after the calf was born, he was able to take his first step with his mother by his side, licking him as he analyzed his surroundings.
The calf’s father, Oliver — a 5-year-old giraffe — was looking on from an adjacent pen.
April the giraffe made headlines after staff at the Animal Adventure Park began live streaming April’s pregnancy via YouTube in February, but the videos were taken down after being flagged for “nudity and sexual content.”
Zoo officials went live on Facebook, where hundreds of people watched, saying, “Unfortunately, with that viral spread that we’ve gained — that popularity — this is a perfect example of why we cannot have nice things.”
“For the millions of you that have been tuning in to take witness of this educational experience of a live giraffe birth, there’s a handful of extremists and animal rights activist that may not agree with us… that have unfortunately reported our YouTube cam as sexually explicit or nude content.”
The live giraffe cam YouTube video of April garnered over 20 million views.
“What [removing the live stream] has done is pulled an educational tool away from tens of millions of individuals,” zoo officials said on Facebook Live. “By bringing awareness, we can bring appreciation and eventually conservation to giraffes in the wild.”
If you are driving this weekend, these are the only longnecks you should enjoy! Congratulations #AprilTheGiraffe pic.twitter.com/ZrMLXg9SLn
— Gilbert Police Dept. (@GilbertPolice) April 15, 2017
YouTube later confirmed that they restored April the giraffe’s videos and her fan based continued to grow, reaching millions of people worldwide.
April the giraffe’s GoFundMe page was created after gaining millions of fans. The zoo made a set goal of $50,000 but after April and Oliver welcomed their new calf, they’ve amassed over $130,000 in donations.
The money will be used to care for the animals.
Updated photos and videos of April the giraffe and her new calf are being shared on Animal Adventure Park’s Facebook page.
In a recent Facebook post, the zoo shared a photo of April and her calf with a caption that stated, “All is well.”
Now that April the giraffe has given birth, the Animal Adventure Park is holding a social media contest to help name the calf.
[Featured Image by Animal Adventure Park/Facebook]
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