Each year zookeepers use a theme for newly-born chicks which have previously included British Olympic athletes, England football players and chocolate bars.
The chicks have been named after the South East Asian development that visitors will enjoy later in the summer when the zoo unveils its new £40m Islands project.
Team manager Andy Woolham explains: "Naming the penguin is a bit of fun for the team. It allows us to track he age of the birds easily because doing it by their spot pattern can be challenging. "This year we decided to celebrate the up-coming opening of our new Islands development and named the chicks in the order that visitors will see each island on their expedition. "Although the penguins aren't moving to Islands, given that it's such a momentous moment in the zoo's history, we thought our new fluffy friends could help us mark the occasion. We named the first chick Panay who was quickly followed by Papua, Bali, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Sumba, Java, Tuma but we're still eagerly waiting for a few more eggs to hatch"
Penguin keeper Sally Baross said: "The team closely monitor the chicks, weighing them daily and giving extra fish to the parents so that they can feed their hungry new arrivals. “All of the chicks are doing really well and have grown incredibly quickly. The first chick, Panay, was only 68g on hatching but has soon shot up to 450g so we’re really pleased.”
Each pair of the South American species which come from the coastal areas of Peru and Chile lays two eggs and incubates them for 40 days up until hatching. Both parents are then involved in rearing the young until they are fully fledged before making their tentative first splash in the main pool with the rest of the colony.
Of the world's 17 penguin species, Humboldt penguins are among the most at risk being classed as 'vulnerable' to extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Chester Zoo funds conservation initiatives in the penguins' homeland where they are threatened by over fishing, climate change and rising acidity levels in the ocean.
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