Moody Gardens Hatched Two Macaroni Penguin Chicks From One Clutch, With a Foster Swap

Two macaroni penguin chicks hatched at Moody Gardens Aquarium in Galveston, Texas, this month, one on November 6 at 62 grams and one on November 9 at 124 grams. Between them, they needed an incubator, a foster family and a stroke of timing.

The parents are Bleu, a male who came to Moody Gardens from Montreal, and Feta, who arrived in 2016 from SeaWorld San Diego. Their names follow the colony's system. "We named the first generation of adult macaroni penguins after cheeses," said Maggie Reynolds, a senior biologist at the aquarium. "The chicks that we've had since then are named after pastas." The existing flock includes Farfalle, Gnocchi, Manicotti, Ziti and Penne.

The weight gap between the two siblings has a practical explanation. Macaroni penguins lay two eggs a season, a few days apart, and they often kick the first egg out of the nest and break it before the second arrives. So Moody Gardens' staff take the first egg into an incubator in their office, turning it about five times a day to mimic the parents, and return it when it starts to hatch. This year, both eggs were fertile.

Then came the swap. A neighboring pair broke their own second egg the day before Bleu and Feta's second egg began to hatch, and since that pair had raised a chick before, the biologists gave them the second egg to raise. Each pair ended up with one chick to feed, which matters, because feeding two chicks means the parents eat fish, partially digest it, and regurgitate it into two mouths while also feeding themselves.

"Think about putting fish in a blender, sort of fish mush," Reynolds said. "Both chicks have done very well."

A DNA test will later reveal the chicks' sexes. For now they mostly wobble rather than waddle, they won't stand upright for about a month, their adult plumage arrives at about two and a half to three months, and the species' signature yellow crest feathers take about a year.

Macaroni penguins, native to the Sub-Antarctic, are listed as vulnerable, with wild colonies declining under climate change and overfishing. Aquarium curator Diane Olsen said each hatch builds genetic diversity the aquarium can share with other facilities. The chicks are on exhibit now, and also on the aquarium's penguin webcam, where they are considerably easier to tell apart from the adults than they will be in a year.