A giraffe calf falls about six feet when it is born. Fota Wildlife Park in Cork had a Nubian giraffe calf on Monday, June 15, 2026, and she was standing on all four feet inside half an hour.
The mother is Aoife, born at Fota in 2010 and herself the daughter of Roisin, also Fota-born. The father is Ferdie. This is Aoife’s second calf; her first, Clodagh, arrived in 2014. The new calf is female and stood roughly six feet tall at birth.
Three generations in one herd
“The gestation period for giraffes is nearly 15 months, so the team has been eagerly anticipating this arrival for well over a year. Breeding programmes are often complex and unpredictable, and no birth is ever taken for granted. Aoife was incredible throughout. The calf made the typical six-foot drop, landed safely, and was standing on all four feet within the first half hour. Watching those first moments is an incredibly moving experience and a hugely rewarding one for the entire team.”
Aidan Rafferty, lead ranger, Fota Wildlife Park
Fifteen months is a long time to wait for something that can still go wrong, and Rafferty’s phrasing, that no birth is ever taken for granted, is the honest version of what a breeding program feels like from inside.
The herd now numbers nine.
The subspecies is the point
Nubian giraffe, Giraffa camelopardalis camelopardalis, is listed as Critically Endangered. Fota puts the remaining wild population at fewer than 4,000.
Giraffes are an unusual conservation case because most people assume they are fine. They are large, familiar and in every zoo, and the overall giraffe population has fallen sharply while nobody was paying much attention. The situation is worse at subspecies level, and the Nubian is among the worst of it.
Fota contributes 10,000 euros a year to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation.
She has a name now
The park ran a competition for an Irish name and announced the result on August 27. The calf is Fiadh. The winning entry came from a visitor, Aoife Fitzpatrick, who shares a name with the calf’s mother.
Source: Fota Wildlife Park.
