On a cold and snowy December 21st Dorothy (or Dot for short) our Southern white rhino gave birth to a little girl, who has now been named Ailsa, after a 16 month pregnancy.. Our rhino calf was only 1 of 8 Southern white rhino born in Europe in 2009; obviously we wanted to share this rare event with everyone so our Rhino Webcam was set up in the hope that we would catch the birth. Rhinos normally give birth in the very early hours of the morning, and we all thought that we may miss it, but a phone call from a viewer in Cyprus informed us that at 12 noon Dot’s waters had broken and she was in labour. At 12:15 Dot successfully gave birth without any complications under the watchful eye of the large mammal keepers, park staff and home viewers. As she was born during Scotland’s coldest winter in 30 years, mum and calf were kept indoors in their highly heated indoor pen. Now with the weather getting better and the temperature rising, her keepers are confident to let mum and calf venture out into their covered outdoor enclosure. With the initial success of our indoor webcam, ranking in the top 10 webcams worldwide, we have now installed a second outdoor webcam to allow our viewers to follow the progress of our calf as she grows and explores her new home. Dot and her calf share their enclosure with 3 other rhinos, Graham the calf’s dad, Mazumba (or Maz) her sister, and Jane an unrelated adult female. As the calf is still very young it will be another few months yet until she is mixed with the rest of her herd (or crash).

Our large mammal keepers have been training our rhino calf through a programme of positive reinforcement in order to be able to weigh her and to carry out health checks. Already the calf weighs, from an estimated 50kg at birth, 150kg at the age of 5 weeks! But she still has a lot of growing to do, as Dot weighs about 1,600kg! Some of these sessions have been filmed and are able to be viewed on YouTube. CLICK HERE to see us on You Tube. Or you can see the webcam here. Happy viewing!