The fish smoothies are designed to improve the condition of the adult penguins, in particular the yellow-eyed penguin or hoiho, as well as saving the lives of penguin chicks born too small to face the surrounding wildlife.
Wildlife Hospital Trust general manager Jordanna Whyte said it was quite an intensive process making the smoothies.
"You have to thaw the fish a day ahead of time so that it’s not frozen any more when you go to make the smoothie, then you put it into what we have, sort of a commercial-grade blender.
"You put that in there with some liquids and electrolytes, some water, some other nutrients, and then you let that sit, and it just will depend on the fish."
The fish could be in the blender for up to 25 minutes before it was totally ready to be deboned, she said.
"You’re putting in whole fish, so it’s a pretty intense operation with that blender.
"We’re getting rid of any last little bone fragments or any bits of skin or anything that didn’t get blended up completely in the blender and get that — right now, we’re having to do that by hand."
Ms Whyte said it was a challenge sourcing all the ingredients.
"I often end up going to the supermarket and buy up all the sardines; it makes for a very strange experience."
In total, more than 300 litres of smoothies would be made over the next few months.
"If we had more blenders that would be really helpful.
"Anything that can make it go faster, and no pun intended, but smoother, is welcome.
"At the moment we’re doing a little bit of troubleshooting around the sieving part too to see if we’ve had a few suggestions made to us around equipment that could make that sieving process go faster, but we’re still looking for a kind of magical unicorn piece of equipment that’s going to help with that."
During breeding season, she expected there would be more than 160 chicks come through the wildlife hospital for monitoring, Ms Whyte said.
"It’s difficult to say that we’re looking forward to it because we would prefer that the hoiho didn’t need this intense intervention to keep the population going.
"However, it is an important service that we provide, so we look forward to making a difference for the species. But it is extremely busy, extremely stressful.
"So anything we can do ahead of time to make that easier for us, we do that."
