Catching up! Part 1:The chick

Well, it's been a while, deal with it!
I have had an incredibly busy summer, and this fall seems slower paced, something I welcome. I spent the summer raising a Gentoo penguin chick. Well, not entirely by myself, but between the chick's mom, myself, and the keepers who filled in on my days off. The father was a little clueless this year on his role, so Biscuit was a single mom. Every few days she needed some time off, but overall she was a fantastic mom! Each day I would carefully weigh the chick, sometimes more than once a day, and make sure he/she was getting enough to eat. Some days the chick would lose weight, and we would have to feed it more food, in addition to what mom was feeding. The first few times we did that was tricky, because the chick was so tiny it had to be fed by a tube. That was scary, because the risk of the formula going into the chick's lungs is pretty high, and we were afraid it would choke. Thankfully, all went fine, and the chick didn't need any other assisted feedings until it was old enough to swallow chunks of fish. That was easier, but messier! The chunks of herring were dipped in formula and then fed to the chick, who swallowed and would then sling his head so that formula went flying everywhere!


How do you make formula you ask? Well..........it's a combination of yeast, water, vitamins (penguin's and infant's), krill, herring filets (no bones-not easy to do!), and vitamin e drops.........blend in the blender and chill overnight. Not too complicated, but it only keeps for 24 hours, so we had to make it every day, because we never knew if we needed to feed him/her the next day or not! Plus, we had to make sure mom was eating enough too, so we kept track of her daily intake of fish and how many times we observed her feeding the chick, and whether or not it was a successful feeding. Regurgitated fish fed from a penguin is gross...and the poo from the chick is the foulest smell around!









ANYWHO............the chick is now 100 days old, and is swimming on his/her own! I was a nervous wreck the week we started introducing him to the other birds and the water. He/she had lived with the protection of an acrylic playpen surrounding the nest his entire life, so I was stressed. This animal I spent so much time caring for was about to be turned loose with the older, tougher birds. However, the chick is doing fantastic among the other birds!

In December we will take blood and send it off for determining the sex of the chick, so around the first of the year we will know. I say it's a male, but I said that last year and Pepper proved me wrong. This was only one of my many adventures this summer, but it'll take a while to get caught up. More on my summer, in the next entry! Look at chick on his/her own! ->