Best Xmas Prezzie ever - Part 1 - Pengies

Wednesday morning at 8am, instead of being at home, getting ready for work, I was in fact here, at the staff entrance of Chester Zoo! Why, you may well ask! Well I was just about to embark on a very special day out being a 'Keeper for the Day'.
As I wandered round to the Parrot & Penguin section office, I wondered what my day had in store. I was kind of excited and nervous all at the same time. I needn't have worried. The P&P team were really nice. Alan, the team leader, Karen and Claire, the keepers, and Sian, the vet student. When I arrived they were putting all the feed into metal bowls. I know now that they put all the dry feed out in the bowls the night before, and also chop all the fruit and veg ready for the morning (but they keep it in the fridge) so that's what they were doing - adding the fruit and veg to the bowls of seeds, ready to hand out to all the lovely birds.
So first things first - I got changed into my 'work gear', and then Alan asked me the important question - Parrots or Penguins? Penguins I said - but I love all the birds! SO first detail of the morning was feeding the Pengies. Off we went to the penguin enclosure and into the fish store area - there were a load of fishies in the sink -boxes which were taken out of the freezer yesterday and left to defrost. We had to sort out the odd looking ones (they're mostly sprats but the occasional different one creeps in) and then choose 20 sprats to add a vitamin pill to - for all the nesting females. Out we went into the back of the penguin enclosure, and straight into the main area. Sian fed the female pengies and Karen showed me one of the baby penguins which had had some problems and they were weighing it every day. As you can see it was very cute - and was the right weight! After that I was allowed to chuck the fish into the pool for the penguins swimming there. They flew SO fast through the water it was quite impressive.
After the feeding, Sian and I had the task of washing all the windows around the penguin enclosure - it was quite an interesting feat trying to clean the INSIDE of them, especially with inquisitive pengies following the broom's every move.
Next post will be about the Parrot part to this lovely day out!