APRIL IS HAVING HER BABY!!!!

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39. April and Oliver are the only giraffes at Animal Adventure Park

So they are bonded in a way that would not be normal in the wild. Behavior in captivity is completely different than that in natural habitats.

I know horses and in the wild there is a stallion that tries to control his band of mares. He does not participate in the births and has nothing to do with the upbringing of the foals but he does help protect the herd from predators and other stallions. The mares go off on their own to foal alone and bring their foals back to the herd when the foals are bonded to their mothers and are able to run - usually in just a day or two.

On the other hand, foalings in human controlled environments are different. Other horses are close around and they all get excited. I never let my stallion be close when foals were born, but other mares and geldings were often in neighboring pastures. They all got excited, similar to the way that Oliver is acting.

You want to see a grown horse get totally silly? Watch an older gelding not used to seeing baby horses see a foal for the first time. They get completely ga-ga over the babies! I used to have to warn my boarders whose geldings had not been at boarding farms to not try to ride in the field next to the foaling pasture. For the first few days, they would get no riding done, the geldings were so distracted they would sometimes trip over their own feet!

Gelding behavior is not seen in the wild since geldings are a human development, but even young stallions get silly over baby horses.While we kept the stallion away, sometimes we'd have yearling or two year old stallions on the farm and they got as enraptured by the new foals as the older geldings did.

I wish I had video taped some of those behaviors - they would be great on YouTube!