In the video, senior trainer Gretchen Freimuth takes you behind the scenes as she gives week-old chick No. 222 its daily health exam.

 

Except for their short trips to the exam room each day, the babies are tucked under Mom’s or Dad’s tummy, against a toasty-warm brood patch, in a secure nest of smooth stones in the Oceanarium’s penguin exhibit.

Visit soon — the chicks grow from fluff balls to full-size, fully feathered birds in about two and a half months. In fact, for the first several weeks they gain between 10 percent and 25 percent of their body weight every day on a high-fat, high-protein diet of regurgitated fish slurry from their parents. No. 222 went from 82 grams at hatching to 303 grams a week later — nearly quadrupling its weight. “From day to day I really can see growth,” says Gretchen. “There is that much weight gain that you can tell the difference.”

All three sets of parents are doing great jobs raising their chicks. If for some reason a chick doesn’t make its anticipated gain — red-flagged by the daily weight monitoring — Gretchen and the others on the penguin team are ready with their “sushi tray” — little chunks of herring and krill fillets that are dipped in a formula of pureed herring, krill, vitamins and water, and popped down waiting open mouths. “Yum!” Gretchen says.

The nests are in plain view at ground level in the penguin exhibit. The oldest chick, 220, is at the farthest left point; to the immediate right, separated by a small rock divider is 222. No. 221 is to the right of the central rock outcrop, back from the middle of the smooth haul-out area.

At first, you might see a little penguin face poking out between parental feet, but as the summer progresses, it will be hard for Mom and Dad — who take 12-hour shifts brooding and feeding the chick — to straddle their growing offspring to keep it warm.

This is the seventh year of successful breeding for the gentoos. Shedd also has rockhopper penguins, which started breeding 12 years ago.