In late November, zoo staff found one of the female African penguins had laid an egg and was intently sitting on it incubating it, she said. They were then on baby watch, waiting to see if a chick would be born. “Everyone was excited,” Donarski said of the staff, who haven’t had a penguin chick at the zoo in about 12 years.
But later, around Christmas time, after the approximately 38-day incubation period, no chick was born and it turned out the egg was just yoke. It was a disappointment, Donarski said, but there is still time to try again this winter and she is still hopeful.
The Racine Zoo has three pairs of penguins, she said. One pair is not recommended for breeding and the other, “They don’t seem to want to be parents. They don’t seem to get it,” she said.
But the third pair, which recently laid the egg, has been showing signs that a penguin chick could be in the zoo’s future.
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