London Zoo staff save premature penguin chick.... after parents stand on its shell

London Zoo staff saved a tiny baby penguin named Rainbow after its parents accidentally cracked its egg by standing on it before it hatched.

Zookeepers sprang into action to help the chick after they realised what happened, removing parts of the shell carefully with tweezers before moving the chick to an incubation room.

Penguin keeper Suzi Hyde said: “We were overjoyed when she started begging for food by opening her mouth wide and making tiny squawks. It was the first sign that she might just make it.”

Rainbow spent the next few weeks recovering and cuddled up to a toy penguin under the warm glow of a heat lamp, while being hand-fed three times a day.

The keepers fed Rainbow a ‘penguin milkshake’, which was a diet of blended fish, vitamins and minerals.

Suzi said: “Rainbow’s bodyweight has steadily increased by around 20 percent every day, so she’s growing extremely quickly.”

The one-month-old chick is expected to stay in the incubation room until she reaches 10 weeks, by which time she should have grown from 73g at hatch to around 3kg in weight.

Suzi added: “Penguins do accidentally step on their eggs, which – even if the chick survives – invariably leads to them rejecting the infant.”

So it was thanks to keepers’ care and the chick's resilience that it was able to survive. It is expected Rainbow will move to the zoo’s penguin nursery for swimming lessons, before joining the 80 other penguins in the zoo.