Flora the zebra foal is 50th at Cotswold Wildlife Park

Not only is the newborn Flora the 10th breeding success for parents Stella and Spongebob, but she is also the 50th Chapman’s Zebra to be born at the park.

The park team say the achievement is testament to the park’s commitment to its breeding programme. 

Cotswold Wildlife Park is the only zoological collection in the UK to successfully breed the iconic African species this year. 

The foal was named Flora by her adoring keepers. Visitors can see the youngster alongside her family in the Zebra enclosure opposite the large Rhino paddock.

Cotswold Wildlife Park has been home to the legendary African mammals since 1972. 

Curator Jamie Craig said: “Repeating successes can be tricky when breeding animals, so to have reached the milestone of fifty foals since we opened is a real triumph for all the dedicated keepers, past and present, who have cared for our Zebras over the years at the Park.”

Early archive records state that the first pair of Grevy’s Zebras were purchased from Copenhagen Zoo in 1971. The friendly male was “...exceedingly trusting for a stallion Zebra.” 

The pair went on show to the public for the first time in March 1972 and made the national press when a photographer captured an incredible action shot of one of the new Grevy’s Zebras fearlessly chasing a White Rhino around the paddock. 

The first Chapman’s Zebra (Equus quagga chapmani) arrived at the Burford collection in 1978, eight years after the park first opened to the public in 1970. 

They have been an integral part of the collection for over 50 years and even replaced the park’s original Red Panda logo in the 1980s. 

The energetic foal has been attracting the attention of visitors with her speedy galloping around the paddock. Speed is vital for survival in the wild as they need to outpace predators such as lion and hyena in the wild. 

Zebras can reach speeds exceeding 35mph and foals are up on their feet soon after birth and can run with the herd within a few hours of being born. 

In 2023, in addition to producing the UK's only Chapman's Zebra foal, Cotswold Wildlife Park became the only zoological collection in the UK to breed the critically endangered Greater Bamboo Lemur. 

It was also the only collection in the world to breed Mexican Leaf Frogs and became the second zoological collection in history to have achieved success breeding these rare amphibians. 

The Park celebrated another first in August – the birth of two White Rhinos in the space of just one week. Cotswold Wildlife Park has now bred 11 Rhino calves in as many years.