North American Asian Elephant Population 2025

Interesting name choice to say the least. On first glance I had thought Elon Musk had named the calf! To be honest, I think it will grow on me.

Anyhow, it's absolutely awesome to have a healthy calf on the ground. A male is equally great. Xerxes is the first ever surviving male calf born at Oklahoma, after a run of four girls to Asha.

It's also really good to see the whole herd all integrated quite quickly. It seems it wasn't a herd birth, but nonetheless it's good to see the calf in a herd setting not long after it's birth.

Congrats to the OKC team. I know they've been greatly looking forward to birth of this little one!
 
MidwestFan said:
Male calf born at Oklahoma City Zoo on 6/17/2025 to Achara and Bowie:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1119306600035471
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And so their birth success continues! Looks like Bowie will be their breeding bull for the time being after Rex passed at the start of the year. Nothing wrong with their calves and youngsters all being girls as it was with all their previous births, but I'm overjoyed it's a male. I also love how all the younger elephants born at Okla City have names representing their home bases across India and SE Asia whilst a lot of the other breeding facilities here basically bestow their calves traditional English human names. Fort Worth seems to have a unique convention of calling calves Texas themed names
 
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The Horse Boy said:
And so their birth success continues! Looks like Bowie will be their breeding bull for the time being after Rex passed at the start of the year. Nothing wrong with their calves and youngsters all being girls as it was with all their previous births, but I'm overjoyed it's a male. I also love how all the younger elephants born at Okla City have names representing their home bases in India and SE Asia whilst a lot of the other breeding facilities here who just give traditional English people names to their calves. Fort Worth seems to have a unique convention of calling calves Texas themed names
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Xerxes is greek and so pays no homage to India/South-East Asia
 
Nile Hippo Expert said:
America’s first fourth-generation elephant calf is here!
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An excellent point, this one completely slipped my mind!

Truth be told, I was always expecting it to be Rockton or Oregon who produced the first fourth gen calf, but nope, OKC came in for the win on that one! I would not be surprised to see Houston and St Louis (assuming Samudra is still pegged to arrive) follow in relatively short order with more 4th generation births as well. Exciting times all around for the NA population, especially as we will have three separate facilities that will be producing primarily/exclusively forth generation captive bred animals going forwards!
 
Hyak_II said:
An excellent point, this one completely slipped my mind!

Truth be told, I was always expecting it to be Rockton or Oregon who produced the first fourth gen calf, but nope, OKC came in for the win on that one! I would not be surprised to see Houston and St Louis (assuming Samudra is still pegged to arrive) follow in relatively short order with more 4th generation births as well. Exciting times all around for the NA population, especially as we will have three separate facilities that will be producing primarily/exclusively forth generation captive bred animals going forwards!
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This birth really goes to show just how phenomenal OKC's program is. A fully related breeding group consisting of two sisters, three young females and now a male calf. A four member-strong breeding matriline, with the eldest reproductive female being only barely into her twenties with two decades+ of breeding potential left in her. If all goes well they'll have three breeding females within a year! They've been extremely proactive with EEHV protocol, they've followed AZA reccomendations spot on with breeding intervals and when to start breeding their young cows.

Not only that, but they have a spacious facility capable of housing at least three bulls, giving them the capacity to house male calves past separation and, as we've seen with Kandula and Bowie's arrivals, allows them to be proactive with bringing in new bulls as their females require.
They are the model of what every breeding facility should strive to be imo.
 
Frankie_number_1_fan said:
Not only that, but they have a spacious facility capable of housing at least three bulls, giving them the capacity to house male calves past separation and, as we've seen with Kandula and Bowie's arrivals, allows them to be proactive with bringing in new bulls as their females require.
They are the model of what every breeding facility should strive to be imo.
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I thought their facility was able to house two adult bulls at the maximum. Bowie is still young and has just entered adolescence, it could still take years before he becomes and adult
 
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The Horse Boy said:
I thought their facility was able to house two adult bulls at the maximum. Bowie is still young and has just entered adolescence, it could still take years before he becomes and adult
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Bowie is definitely nowhere close to full maturity yet, he is still just eleven, and it’s going to be at least a decade before he is sexually mature. It’s great to see that he became a proven breeder this early on in his life!
 
Nile Hippo Expert said:
Bowie is definitely nowhere close to full maturity yet, he is still just eleven, and it’s going to be at least a decade before he is sexually mature. It’s great to see that he became a proven breeder this early on in his life!
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My point exactly. It's quite an enigma how a lot of captive Asian bulls tend to sire their first offspring at younger ages than their African cousins, as HawkAlot said in the Sedgwick news thread when we were discussing this very situation when their two bull calves were born two months ago.
 
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The Horse Boy said:
I thought their facility was able to house two adult bulls at the maximum. Bowie is still young and has just entered adolescence, it could still take years before he becomes and adult
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Him not being a fully matured bull does not mean he wouldn't need to be held on his own, something that OKC did have the ability and capacity to do while they had two other adult bulls on site.
Which is my point, they appear to have the ability to house multiple bulls, both adults for breeding purposes and room for their young bulls in a small bachelor situation.
 
Frankie_number_1_fan said:
Him not being a fully matured bull does not mean he wouldn't need to be held on his own, something that OKC did have the ability and capacity to do while they had two other adult bulls on site.
Which is my point, they appear to have the ability to house multiple bulls, both adults for breeding purposes and room for their young bulls in a small bachelor situation.
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It's been rehashed here that many of the newer exhibits have the ability to house breeding and/or bachelors, esp in the Asian department. I think a lot of the modern elephant facilities are able to have flexibility in managing different social groupings.
 
The Horse Boy said:
It's been rehashed here that many of the newer exhibits have the ability to house breeding and/or bachelors, esp in the Asian department. I think a lot of the modern elephant facilities are able to have flexibility in managing different social groupings.
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It's certianly becoming more and more common with Asians, but relatively few facilities have both put that on-paper ability to house multiple bulls into practice alongside a fully functioning, decent-sized and actively growing breeding group. Houston is, off the top of my head, the only other zoo that does currently. I'm confident others will follow, but it doesn't make OKC any less impressive!
 
Frankie_number_1_fan said:
It's certianly becoming more and more common with Asians, but relatively few facilities have both put that on-paper ability to house multiple bulls into practice alongside a fully functioning, decent-sized and actively growing breeding group. Houston is, off the top of my head, the only other zoo that does currently. I'm confident others will follow, but it doesn't make OKC any less impressive!
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I think Fort Worth and Oregon can manage a small bull group alongside their breeding herds. And Cincy obviously houses a couple of very young bulls with Sabu. Columbus has and housed two adult bulls and will later this, ABQ has the ability manage 2 mature males, Fort Worth does already and I think Smithsonian can keep a couple males.
 
The Horse Boy said:
I think Fort Worth and Oregon can manage a small bull group alongside their breeding herds. And Cincy obviously houses a couple of very young bulls with Sabu.
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Several facilities can, but as mentioned I'm referring to facilities that actively have multiple bulls seperate from their breeding group and have a large successful breeding group. Fort Worth, Oregon and Cinci do not have that currently, though I have no doubt they will someday.
 
Frankie_number_1_fan said:
Several facilities can, but as mentioned I'm referring to facilities that actively have multiple bulls seperate from their breeding group and have a large successful breeding group. Fort Worth, Oregon and Cinci do not have that currently, though I have no doubt they will someday.
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I think i saw a post on ZC that Rosamond Gifford can separately house a bull group to, but I could be wronf
 
Frankie_number_1_fan said:
Several facilities can, but as mentioned I'm referring to facilities that actively have multiple bulls seperate from their breeding group and have a large successful breeding group. Fort Worth, Oregon and Cinci do not have that currently, though I have no doubt they will someday.
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Best part is that OKC doesn’t normally house Kandula and Bowie separate from the breeding group. They are house together with the girls and often at the same time most days. The only elephant they had who couldn’t be with the girls everyday was Rex.
 
Frankie_number_1_fan said:
Several facilities can, but as mentioned I'm referring to facilities that actively have multiple bulls seperate from their breeding group and have a large successful breeding group. Fort Worth, Oregon and Cinci do not have that currently, though I have no doubt they will someday.
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Im pretty sure Oregon could have multiple bulls separate. They had three mature bulls at once, Rama (crippled due to a bad front leg so no calves), Packy and Tusko. I am not sure if the upgrades included the old facilities though. I have seen pictures, but that was a long time ago. They had Rama in a corner area and you could see his bad leg in the picture.
 
ZCChip said:
Im pretty sure Oregon could have multiple bulls separate. They had three mature bulls at once, Rama (crippled due to a bad front leg so no calves), Packy and Tusko. I am not sure if the upgrades included the old facilities though.
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The old facilities were completely torn down, the new facility's capable of housing elephants through all walks of life. Two bulls are onsite currently with Samson and Samudra.
 
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