00:00I'm Alyssa McCaffrey, lead keeper at the Animal Care Center Nursery, and we're here at Harder Hospital, and we are bottle feeding Buridi, our Maasai giraffe calf.
00:16Buridi was born in December on a very, very cold night, dipping down into the 30s. When he was born, he had an infection and was unable to stand.
00:26So, we had keepers doing a 24-hour watch on him, and it was decided that he needed to come down to the hospital.
00:33When he got down to the hospital, his temperature was very low, so he needed to be on IV fluids and have special care.
00:43With giraffes, sometimes it's really hard keeping their attention and focus on the bottle.
00:48We do have a couple of tricks that we use with our giraffes.
00:51This is our very special giraffe bee, or blanket.
00:54It has been used for, now, four giraffe calves.
00:59When we're getting the calves started on the bottle, we hold the blanket up, and they kind of start getting interested, maybe in the pattern of the blanket,
01:08and then we're able to put the bottle and nipple, and they usually start suckling.
01:13We're afraid that if we wash the special blanket, that the magic will go away, and we won't be able to get our giraffes to eat.
01:19So, us keepers have to deal with the smell every day when we feed these giraffes.
01:25Brady has done incredibly well taking his bottles throughout his hospital stay, and he's now large enough that we're going to be putting him out into our East African exhibit,
01:35so he can be in the nursery group with our other bottle baby, Congo.
01:41Now here we are in the East Africa exhibit in the wide open space.
01:45It was quite the challenge feeding Brady at the hospital, but now that he has all this room, he's graduated from his stinky blanket.
01:53He is doing very well out here in East Africa in the nursery group, and we are very excited to watch him grow into a big giraffe.
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