A baby giraffe has just been born at a private zoo in southern Binh Duong Province.

 

A staff member of Dai Nam Zoo checks new-born giraffe.

The giraffe is 1.9m tall and weighs 60kg. Within three hours of its birth on July 7, it could stand and was suckling its mother.

It was the zoo's third successful giraffe birth. Two were born in 2014. Its parents came from sub-Saharan Africa in 2008. The zoo is now home to seven giraffe.

The four mature giraffe are each about six metres tall and weigh 1.5-1.9 tonnes.

Giraffe have a pregnancy of about 457 days. The zoo's giraffe are raised in a semi-wild environment, with foods including grass, apricot and leaves of several local trees.

A giraffe and its baby in Dai Nam Zoo.

Dai Nam Zoo is the first in Vietnam permitted by the government to try to raise nature's creatures in a semi-wild environment. It has success in captive breeding of threatened species, including tigers, hippopotami, ostrich and rhinoceros.

Duong Thanh Phi, the director of the Dai Nam Zoo, said most of the animals came from Africa, and had readily adapted to the warm weather of southeast Vietnam.

Dtinews/Lao Dong