Pembrokeshire's Folly Farm welcomes critically endangered eastern black rhino calf

Folly Farm in Pembrokeshire is celebrating the birth of another critically endangered eastern black rhino calf – and it’s a boy!
This is the second rhino calf to be born at the family-run zoo located in Begelly, and the second in Wales as part of a managed breeding programme through its membership with EAZA (the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria).
After a 15-month long pregnancy, mum Dakima gave birth to a healthy male calf on Thursday 27 November. With only an estimated 39 eastern black rhinos born in the UK in the past 25 years, it’s a significant achievement for the captive European Endangered Breeding Programme (EEP) for black rhinos.
Eastern black rhinos are classed as critically endangered due to poaching and loss of habitat. There is thought to be an estimated 1471 Eastern black rhino left in the wild and around 109 in zoos across Europe, including Folly Farm’s newest addition.
The calf made its appearance at 6.34am and within a couple of hours was standing up, following mum around the enclosure and had started suckling.
12-year-old eastern black rhino Dakima arrived at Folly Farm in May 2017 as part of a European breeding programme and met her mate, 14 year-old male Nkosi. Mating rhinos can be unpredictable, but their relationship blossomed and Dakima gave birth to her first calf at the start of 2020.
Male calf Glyndŵr was Dakima’s first born and the first rhino calf to have been born in Wales.
Glyndŵr was named after Folly Farm’s Founding Director, the late Glyndŵr Williams, and has since moved onto another animal collection to continue the breeding programme for the species.
Eastern black rhinos are solitary animals and therefore usually reside in their own paddocks. But when the time was right, Dakima and Nkosi were reintroduced again for some carefully planned ‘date nights’ - and keepers predicted she fell pregnant sometime in August 2024.
After having Dakima’s stool sample analysed at a specialist lab in Chester Zoo, who run the breeding programme for Eastern black rhino, it was confirmed that baby number two was on the way, with a due date of mid-November 2025.
©Image: Drew Buckley