Thank you Dahlia, I think that is an enlightening post for all of us.

Thank you indeed, Dahlia. You put into words what's been simmering in the back of my mind for some time.

Dahlia_2020. . . I have the Psittacine diet,Leadbeaters diet,Taronga Zoo diet,HPW diet on hand and view it often with the questions I pose.
I hear that dog/cat food should not be fed but then I see it in a Glider Receipe. I hear that Gliders are lactose intolerant yet I'm told to feed yogurt or cottage cheese. I'm told that corn is not good for them because it can "nullify" calcium intake yet there are receipes containing corn.I've been told not to give fruits/veggies that have a content of "acid" yet I also see receipes with Orange or OJ. Been told that feeding live insects or live pinkies will cause the Glider to smell musky and that it provides too much fat in their diet yet I see these in the diets.
Because as you mentioned,the Glider's activity is certainly alot less than in the wild therefore I don't see the need for the honey and I worry about increased glucose levels ie hypoglycemia therefore I plan to stay with the fruits.
I totally intend on modifying diets but with all I am being told etc I'm just trying to take suggestions,book knowledge and turn it into a useable,nutrional diet for my girls. With all I have read and with all I have been told by everybody,if I use the Wholesome Chicken/Brown Rice diet I know that is not all I should feed and that it is not complete.I know that I'm to add to it with veggies/fruits.
I'm not meaning to "rehash" or "reinvent the wheel",I'm merely asking for input from people that go before me. Asking if what I'm thinking of doing is correct,asking if the vitamin/mineral additive that I've been given and am using is good or not. Can I bypass the vitamin/mineral powder if I"m feeding a well balanced diet?
I'm told that I must meet the 2:1 ratio with calcium/phosphurus yet when I look up the values I see veggies I am told NOT to feed are some of the best 2:1 ratio veggies.
I'm told of some diets that require freezing and yet I read that freezing as well as cooking can destroy the very things I'm trying to obtain.
I'm trying to take what I see to be a controversial issue and simplify it. I'm not meaning to create discord from any of the posters nor am I trying to present myself as an all knowing expert. I'm just an eager beaver "newbie" with a great excitement and desire to do the best I can whether it is with your own diets,booked diets,tried and true diets or my own diet that might contain the modifications you speak of.

I know that many many people before me have quite possibly done the research that I have now taken on and I know that I'm NOT an expert and probably never will be but even when I take the advise of even an Animal Nutrionalist Scientist,there seems to be controversy on their diets as well so I'm getting to a point that I'm almost ready to throw my hands up in surrender.

Thank all you for your input that I totally appreciate. . . sorry I have bothered you.

A lot of us think that taking an animal out of the wild means that we should try our best to replicate their natural diet. This is both true and false. Yes they are specially evolved to consume certain types of food, but also taking them out of a natural setting means a differing set of nutritional demands. Gliders in captivity get a lot more rest because they do not have to travel vast distances searching for food to survive. This means they are burning up a lot less energy, and the need for bugs which are high in calories (fat has more calories then protien or most carbohydrates) is no longer as high. Also their diet in the wild.....well kinda sucks. They spend most of their waking time trying to find enough calories to survive, and in this quest for calories they lack in getting proper vitamins and calcium and therefore have a shorter lifespan and a 'wild coat color' which is brown from a poor diet. We should focus on providing foods which they are designed to eat (juicy foods instead of dry foods or pellets) which we can control their vitamins over the calorie content. This is why many use lean meats as a protien supplement over bugs. I feed my guys a mealworm or two everyday as a treat, but would nto give it as their only form of protien.

Greatestgrammie - later on today/ tonight I will take every question you just posed one by one and answer them. However, it will be a lengthy post that will take me awhile to answer, so I will have to find the time to do this. With family coming in for the holidays I can't do it right now but I'll be back with you later on. I can tell you though that every point of confusion you just brought up has an answer that I can address as soon as I have the time.

And no, you have not bothered anyone. Please don't take my posts the wrong way. You came here for help and that is exactly what everyone here is trying to do.

For the past three years that I've had gliders, diet has been a huge source of anxiety for me. I've finally come to the point of being more relaxed about it, after seeing how healthy my gliders are. I know that three years is NOT a long time. However, seeing the vitality and resilience in my gliders has helped me to relax a bit.

I totally agree--the gliders we have as pets are not the same critters you'd find in the wild. They are, as Dahlia put it, "hot house flowers". We have the ability and potential to keep them far healthier than they probably would be in the wild. In fact, I believe, since they had absolutely no choice in the matter, it's obligation to do so.

I've come to the realization that there is no one perfect diet for gliders at this point. There are many good diets that have withstood the test of time. I think that in addition to our gliders' physical well being, we need to look out for their mental and intellectual well being. That's why, in keeping with what we do know to be true as far as necessary calcium to phosphorus ratios and the minimal knowledge we have of gliders' other nutritional needs, I made a decision a while back to vary my gliders' feedings between BML and 50/25/25.

Let's face it. If we had nothing to eat day after day but a handful of the same very nutritious foods that would be, perhaps, considered very healthy for our physical beings...most of us would not be real happy. We need variety of tastes and textures in our diets to be happy and healthy from a mental standpoint, too. I think it's the same with gliders. It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary stand point, since a variety of foods in our diets gives us a variety of vitamins, minerals, etc.

Greatestgrammie--I know exactly what you're talking about, with all of the conflicting information available about what to feed and what not to feed. It's incredibly confusing. There are some basics, however, that I just go back to--the optimal calcium to phosphorus ratios, and the fact that healthy variety is good for most living creatures. Every time I get to feeling overwhelmed with new nutritional information someone has brought forth, my husband, who is a saltwater critter enthusiast, reminds me of these basic tenants--and the fact that there are many good paths you can take.

I can answer two of your questions.

Gliders are indeed lactose-intolerant, yet we feed them yogurt and cottage cheese for the calcium. When milk is allowed to curdle it separates into two parts: the solid curd, and the liquid whey. Most of the lactose stays in the whey, while most of the calcium (and most of the protein) stays with the curd. The curd is used to make yogurt, cottage cheese, and many other cheeses such as cheddar and colby. Lots of people who are lactose-intolerant can still eat yogurt and cheese; so can gliders.

Feeding live insects does not cause the glider to smell musky. My three get a superworm every day and crickets at least once a week in the tent, as well as other times in the jar; and they don't smell. I don't know about pinkies, because I don't feed them; but I have my doubts about that as well.

Thank you Snusie,this totally explains the Lactose Issue which I could not understand. Getting my girls to eat yogurt made me feel like I had all but poisoned them since I had always considered yogurt to be a dairy product.

Dahlia_2020, I am not totally set on feeding the Wholesome Chicken/Brown Rice diet as a staple as you say I am. . . . .it is just a diet staple that looked extremely good to me and the fact that is a diet perfected by an Animal Nutritional Scientist impressed me. It is the ONLY staple diet that I have found that contains the protein that everybody has told me that I need. I keep getting told that I need to provide 50% of the diet consists of protein and the other 50% needs to come from veggies/fruits. This diet provides 40% Crude Protein that I thought was what I was striving to obtain and maintain hence my indepth questions and concern.

Alright, I’m going to go in order of the issues you brought up in your post.

Before getting into the cat food thing, let me make one thing clear that I can promise you anyone here will agree with me on… Just because you see a recipe posted for some type of so-called glider diet, does NOT mean that that recipe is accurate, or that the poster even knows their head from a hole in the ground. There is a LOT of misinformation out there online in regards to gliders. This is why forums like GliderGossip and GC exist. People who had gliders needed a place to gather in order to cut away the bull from fact.

Cat food/Dog food – The reason why you see so many references to kibble and whether or not it’s good for gliders is a debate with a bit of history behind it. When gliders first hit the pet market, very little was known about these guys and there really weren’t any diets (homemade or otherwise) available for comparison. From all of this confusion a couple of common practices evolved. One was feeding gliders the same way exotic parrots were being fed (the Psittacine Diet) and the other one was The Taronga Zoo Diet/Leadbeaters. This diet was original formulated by the a zoo in Australia as a way of feeding their squirrel gliders. Both of these diets are still considered to be decent ones for gliders, and I know of people who have successfully fed leadbeaters for close to ten years to the SAME glider or gliders.

But the third diet that became widely acceptable by glider owners was a cheaper, easier approach, and that was to feed them a diet primarily made up of something that anyone could get at any grocery store. Cat food. This was a very wide spread belief. Even vets thought this was acceptable, because even vets didn’t have any more information than we did. It was believed that the nutrition provided a complete source of nutrition. Breeders of gliders were doing this, and informed their clients to do likewise. There was some supplementation of yogurt, fruit, and bugs. But it was still primarily made up of cat food.

This was the very first diet I became familiar with when I got started with gliders almost ten years ago. I was told by a breeder that this is what I should feed. It’s very interesting to have been in a position to start with gliders ten years ago, then fast forward to what I now know about them all this time later. In fact I have a glider book that was published in 1997. Twelve years ago. This book was an amazing source of information at the time (and still is) but there are many examples of how little they knew about gliders even 12 years ago. There are parts in this book that I will read, and it’ll make me cringe. But that’s just because they didn’t know any better at the time. We still don’t have all the answers when it comes to gliders, and it is a constant learning experience. But we’ve come a long way in just a decade, particularly where gliders’ dietary requirements are concerned. But we’ve unfortunately had to learn this the hard way through losing our pets to malnutrition.

The first pair of gliders I ever had any experience with, were a pair that my brother brought home one day. They were fed a diet primarily made up of cat food, just like he had been told to do. These babies literally STUNK to high heaven and were very yellow in what we now know to be a symptom of an extremely poor diet. We were told the scent was normal for a glider, but there was nothing natural about it at all. That is because very few people knew what a healthy glider was supposed to look and smell like. If you think a healthy glider can get a little stinky, then just wait until you get to encounter one like this. The smell literally permeated the entire house. No amount of cleaning could touch it. The female died within a year. Her mate followed less than a year after her while in my care. This was a very heart breaking experience.

I then found out that the belief in using cat food as the PRIMARY source of nutrition was slowly being phased out as it was coming to the attention of many whose gliders were dying that the cat food was behind this. In fact, in that book I have that was published 12 years ago, there is a paragraph where the author discusses this and cautions breeders and owners to limit the use of cat food until more information was forthcoming. Good foresight, as it turned out to be true.

Now, fast forward to 2009. We now know that the fillers, preservatives, and amount of certain vitamins, minerals, and protein levels in cat food to be bad news on gliders’ internal organs. Does that mean that you can’t feed your glider any cat or dog kibble? Not necessarily. But you DO have to feed a brand that is very high quality, with no fillers and no corn and in EXTREME moderation. The only brand I would ever recommend would be Evo, as it is just about as close to a natural diet as you can get in a kibble form.

But even then, I do not PERSONALLY think that cat or dog food is a necessary requirement for a glider’s diet. There are some people though, who have their gliders on excellent and well balanced, nutritious diets who will occasionally offer their glider a kibble or two for teeth cleaning purposes. I can actually see the benefit of this, and who knows? I might even consider doing it myself one day. It’s something that I’m open to looking into further and deciding whether or not its something I’d like to do


Cottage cheese/Yogurt – This question has already been answered beautifully by Snusie. I ditto what she said. I will also say that the general consensus is that yogurt is the better of the two, and I consider yogurt to be a MUST in a glider’s diet. That’s why I include yogurt in my veggie relishes as a way of not only boosting the calcium in the recipe, but also as a way for me to include yogurt and all of its others benefits besides calcium (like additional protein) into my gliders’ diets. We don’t know ALL of the reasons why gliders do so well on yogurt. But it’s a fact that they do and we’ve seen that from the very beginning with these guys. But you have to be careful with yogurt and not overfeed it. That’s the way it goes with pretty much everything in a glider’s diet. Everything in varying degrees of moderation. Although high in calcium, yogurt is also equally high in phosphorous. So appropriate measures need to be taken to ensure that a glider achieves the full benefits that yogurt can offer a diet without hindering it. You do this by balancing the ratios through using other foods. You can see an example of this in my veggie relishes by adding the calcium fortified OJ to the mix. I’ll get into the OJ/oranges/citric acid thing in just a minute.

Corn – Again, its all about moderation and balancing the ratios. Corn is a glider’s version of potato chips. Are they healthy? No. If half of what you ate in a day, every day, was potato chips, would you be healthy? No.

But if you only had a couple of day, but were eating a very healthy diet that was at least 90% of what your daily intake was, would you be healthy? Yes.

Corn is ok to give to gliders, but in moderation. The phosphorous and oxylate content in a fruit or veggie only affects that particular food. It doesn’t affect the rest of the diet if the rest of the diet is balanced properly. You can feed a glider something like corn which has a severely backwards ratio, but if you supplement it with something very HIGH in calcium, then the ratio of the entire diet will balance out.

You see this in the recipes that I made, that I provided the links to in a previous post. All I did was figure out how much of one veggie I could include in a recipe that would compliment the others. You will see anywhere from half a cup of one veggie, to six cups of another. The higher the calcium value of a veggie or fruit, the more of it I’ll put in a recipe, as it helps balance out the lower calcium/high phosphorous veggies that, despite the backwards ratio, still provide good nutrition. They just have to be balanced with something very high in calcium in order to bring the overall ratio of the recipe to 2:1, or twice as much calcium as phosphorous.

Orange Juice/Oranges – Let me ask you a question… if you woke up in the morning after not having eaten anything for 12 plus hours, and you ate nothing but a dozen oranges or grapefruit, or guzzled an entire gallon of OJ, what would happen?? You would have the worst case of acid reflux in your life. Citric acid effects everyone to a one extent or the other. Does that mean oranges or orange juice is bad? No. It’s very healthy for you. But if you ate or drank too much of it, it would give you a belly ache and diarrhea. It’s the same with gliders.

If you are in the habit of feeding a large amount (by gliders’ standpoint) of only one or two fruits and veggies a night to your glider, and you decide to feed oranges, then you will wind up probably giving too much of it to them, which will result in a belly ache and diarrhea. Same as if a fruit with citric acid made up most of what you ate in a day. But if used in a diet where the orange or orange juice makes up maybe 10% or less of the meal, you don’t have any problems as there is enough other food there to keep the citric acid from even being a blip on the radar.

I started using calcium fortified OJ in my recipes after spending a lot of time talking about it with Ed from Lucky Glider Rescue. He uses calcium fortified OJ in his modified version of HPW as a supplement for water as he felt like HPW needed to be tweaked to have a 2:1 ratio or higher. Instead of the two cups of water, he uses OJ. He has almost a 100 gliders in his rescue at the moment, and countless others that have come through his rescue that are on this diet. That’s a HUGE testing ground and to see some of the before and after pics of some of his rescues are, needless to say, impressive. The calcium fortified OJ offers an almost 13:1 ratio. This is a tremendous and inexpensive way of boosting the calcium in a glider’s diet if used properly and balanced out accordingly. Why feed a few bites of orange if you can give just a few drops of this to a glider instead, and get such amazing benefits?

With my recipes, I decided the calcium fortified OJ would be a good thing to blend into my veggie relishes as a way of not only boosting the calcium level of the veggies, but also dealing with the high phosphorous level in the yogurt that I also include. Rather than using the OJ in my HPW like Ed does, I decided to put it where it was really needed, and that was in the veggies as I wanted my veggie recipes to be just as balanced as my fruit ones were. But the problem with this is that there are very few veggies out there that have a high level of calcium in them, that don’t also have oxylates, which cancel out a large percentage of the calcium absorption. For example, spinach and collard greens are high in oxylates. Because of this, only 5% of calcium in spinach can be absorbed, and approx. 65% in collard greens. Does this mean not to feed spinach or collards? NO. These are great and nutritious foods. You just can’t count on all the calcium that they have, and have to adjust the overall diet ratio accordingly.

At first glance it looks like the OJ offered in my recipes is a lot. It actually isn’t when you take into consideration the size of the batches. It translates to a very small amount in a nightly serving of the entire diet that I offer my gliders. I’m also currently working on two more veggie relishes to enter into a nightly rotation that have even less calcium fortified OJ in them than the two I’ve already made. I also have zero citrus fruits in any of my fruit cocktails as a way of ensuring that there isn’t too much citric acid in the diet. My gliders are thriving on their veggie relishes and have no problems it. All three of my babies were rescues and had been on extremely poor diets prior to becoming a part of my family. The changes they’ve undergone just by feeding them a large variety every week of properly balanced fruits, veggies and HPW has been dramatic and speaks for itself.

That is not to say that you have to feed your gliders OJ. Some people use human grade calcium supplements like calcium carbonate and calcium citrate as an alternative to the animal grade calcium supplements, like rep-cal. This is something that could be done with my veggie relishes if one preferred.

This is actually something I’m thinking about doing with my HPW, as I think they maybe it would be beneficial for my gliders’ COMPLETE diet to be a 2:1 ratio… not just the fruits and veggies.

Insects – Pretty much everyone will tell you that the use of insects in a glider’s diet is now more of a treat, then anything else. This wasn’t always the case. Go back a decade and some people thought they should make up the majority of the diet. We now know that insects are high in fat, mealworms are actually relatively low in protein, and that if you feed too many to your glider, there are issues with gliders getting fat. And as far as the smell is concerned, its sometimes not eating the insects that creates a smell… it’s a case of someone feeding too much of something that is not that nutritionally sound to their glider, and not giving them enough of something that is healthier. If a glider’s diet is far enough off the mark nutritionally, then gliders will smell worse. But that can happen even if you never feed them a single bug.

Gliders also tend to turn into little terrors when they see live prey. This will sometimes cause them to mark their territory by releasing more of their musk. This will happen particularly in colonies, where there is a member who may be territorial over food just in general. I know this is the case with my boy. He hardly ever smells, but if I give him mealworms, he gets VERY food possessive and doesn’t want to share with the others. And when he gets that way his musk glands will go into overdrive for that night.

Pinkies – feeding pinky mice was a widespread practice a long time ago, but it’s lost its appeal in the previous years. Very few people do this anymore as with advancements in some areas of glider nutrition, it’s not really considered important anymore. There are other ways of feeding gliders protein and calcium. Pinky mice aren’t even a good source of calcium as their skeletal structure hasn’t fully calcified yet. But do you really want to take a live juvenile or adult mouse and turn it loose in your glider’s cage? Why would you risk your glider getting injured or dealing with the blood and pelt/leftovers in the morning if you don’t have to? Remember, our pet gliders are nothing like the ones in the wild that have been taught by their parents to catch and eat live prey. Our gliders don’t even really have the physical strength or psychological know-how to take down such large prey as most of them haven’t had to ever deal with this. And why would you choose this tactic if you can provide protein and calcium in an alternative form to them? One that is proven to be healthier for them in the long run? HPW, chicken, eggs, yogurt… all of these are good sources of protein. Calcium can easily be provided in the form of a natural selection of fruits and veggies if you balance the ratios. Why make more work for yourself then you have to? Especially if what you are doing is heading in a backwards direction towards a practice that isn’t even widely in use anymore?

Honey – Again, we are back to the whole in moderation bit, but what I would like to know is why you have jumped to the conclusion that honey causes hypoglycemia in gliders?? Where are you even getting this? The only cases of gliders having seizures that I’ve seen have been the result of neurological issues brought on by inbreeding, malnutrition, or poison. Had nothing to do with HPW. And even though there are some people who think that the honey content in HPW is too large an amount and needs to be cut in half and replaced in part with apple sauce, there isn’t any medical evidence to back this up. It’s ALL speculation. One person gets into their head that something is bad and everyone else jumps on the band wagon without any cold hard facts to back it up and the result is established diets being altered without any proof as to why this even needs to be done.

Does HPW contain more honey than it should? Maybe it does. But then again, maybe not. Honey is more than just sugar. There are other nutritional benefits to honey. But at the end of the day, the amount of honey that is in a single serving of a teaspoon and a half of HPW, is the equivalent of a licky treat. If a glider is receiving the proper amount of nutritiously beneficial fruits and veggies, then it all balances out. There was actually a really good thread over at GC about this that I’ll have to look and see if I can find the link to later.

This is not to say however, that supplementing apple sauce for half of the honey isn’t a good idea. This might be something that I’ll do myself at a later date. What I am saying, is that we really don’t KNOW. So stating something as being a fact is a slippery slope.

I have my reasons for choosing the HPW diet. I spent months researching all of the diets, speaking to vets, digging through forum archives, and studying nutritional spread sheets. At the end of the day, the info I came up with led me to feel that HPW was the best for my gliders as it seemed to have less question marks around it then some of the other popular diets. Does that mean that HPW is still not open for modifications? Absolutely not. I just think that there needs to be a LOT of research done first before we start tweaking things. And even then, we need to make sure that the tweaking can’t potentially cause more harm than good. This is true for any of the popular diets.

I spent a lot of time on my fruit and veggie recipes as the one critical aspect of feeding HPW is that the fruits and veggies fed along with it need to contain the proper amount of calcium. I haven’t created a “diet” necessarily, like some have done. All I’ve done is take the same fruits and veggies that we all feed our gliders and figured out the best way of combining them to take advantage of their nutritional benefits while still providing a large variety to my gliders every night.

When I first started studying ratios, I was SERIOUSLY confused and I know I’m not the only one. I just wanted someone to TELL me what I needed to feed my gliders and how much of it, so I could provide the best nutrition to them without having to become a nutritional analyst. Unfortunately though, there were no such “paint-by-numbers” recipes available at that time. At least, not any that were a 2:1 ratio. So when I finally started to grasp the concept of ratios, and learned how to use the recipe feature here on this site, I decided I would not only create a bunch of them for my own use, but would make them public so I could share them with others who also wanted to stay true to the 2:1 ratio, but were having difficulty figuring it all out on their own.

I made so many types of recipes because I wanted to provide my gliders with the wide array of variety that they deserved and LittleBit (my boy and the first of my three rescues) had become used to when I used to feed him the 25-25-50 diet prior to making the switch to HPW. If variety is the spice of life, then I never wanted my guys to feel slighted. The fact that I have clean plates every single morning and three beautiful, healthy looking babies that had looked like death warmed over when I first got them tells me that I’m doing my job right.

Freezing/Cooking – Some veggies are more nutritional served raw, whereas others are more nutritious served cooked. Some have to be cooked to ensure that there are no toxins present. There is also a difference between really cooking something, or just blanching it for a couple of minutes in boiling water to make it more edible and/or safer for the gliders to eat. There is also some recent studies that point to steaming some leafy green veggies such as spinach actually reduces oxylates which means a higher level of calcium is absorbed, even though the overall ratio of vitamins and minerals might have been reduced by lightly cooking.

You have to remember, there is a HUGE difference between overall nutrition present in a particular food, and what is ACTUALLY absorbed. Sometimes cooking or lightly steaming helps with this by making the veggie in question easier to digest, and therefore easier to absorb.

So even though some of the nutrients get wasted, it’s possible that more are absorbed than they would have if the veggie was served raw.

And as far as freezing is concerned, if you can play chief every night and provide your gliders with a nutritiously balanced and diverse selection of food, then go for it. But for some of us, this isn’t a possibility. The method behind why I created my recipes was because I wanted to provide a very well balanced, diverse menu to my gliders every single night but there was no way I could spend an hour or two on their diet every single night in order to pull this off with nothing but fresh ingredients. Not only would the expense of this be HUGE as the amount of fruit and veggies that would go to waste from going bad before getting used would be astronomical, but I’m also a very busy individual. Even if I could afford to, I CAN’T do that for them every night. But I didn’t want to take any shortcuts with their nutrition, either. The only thing that is left is to then freeze in bulk. And although this MAY reduce some nutrients to a certain extent, its still better than throwing a pelleted formula and a couple pieces of whatever fruit or veggie you happen to have on hand at them.

And when I say pelleted, I’m not necessarily referring to this chicken/brown rice formula you keep referring to. I will say however, that I have the tendency to cringe anytime someone starts saying they like the idea of a particular so-called diet, simply because it was supposedly created by a animal nutritional scientist and has been made to look good on paper. You stick around in the glider community any length of time and you will understand why that is. There are many pelleted/processed glider diets out there that say the exact same thing. Biggest case in point would be a certain large mill breeder/mafia that uses everything from so-called scientists and vets that have been bought off to spout their propaganda, to outright LYING about where their pelleted formula has been created.

Does that mean what you are looking at is bad? Not necessarily. But I have a feeling if it was all it was cracked up to be, I would have heard about it before now.

I hope this answers some of your questions, and assists you with making the best decision for yourself and your gliders. Heaven knows its the longest post I've ever made! lol!

First off I want to THANK YOU for your carefully thought out indepth reply to my questions and concerns. Your answers simplify alot of concerns I was having. I was beginning to think that if I gave my girls any yogurt,cottage cheese,spinach,collard greens,Romaine lettuce,oranges/OJ that I was literally setting a death trap. You have COMPLETELY calmed my worries.
The whole hypoglycemia/hyperglycemia thing somewhat stems from my own issues with it and because of what I see in my children/grandchildren when they get too much sugar. . .overstimulation,jitters and headaches. I would only assume that animals could suffer the same thing.
I had a 110 lb dog that got ahold of my 14 lb dog. The 14 lb dog suffered mild "shockiness" and I was instructed to get sugar into that dog to help level out the adrenalin that was pulsating through his system.I realize that sugar in peanut butter as I was instructed to get the dog to eat is processed sugar BUT the issue with the adrenalin gland responding to "sugar" of any kind was some of the issue I thought might be that a downfall if you will to giving honey to Sugar Gliders.

With the Chicken/Brown Rice diet,when I look over the ingrendients it looks more wholesome than those ingredients that I have read on the SunCoast Diet,Glider Grub,Happy Glider and even the Glider Feed I considered that is handled by my local pet store though I feel that EVERYBODY nixes the idea of feeding any kind of "manufactured" diet altogether. If it is used as a STAPLE is it all that bad?
When you address the smell issue of Sugar Gliders and that a musky/bad smell relates to a poor diet,my girls who have been on the pelleted Glider Grub since oop only had a mild musky smell if you want to call it that when I acquired them BUT in my possession that smell has almost diminished completely though I do notice a very slight smell in their pouch if I carry them around all day so I can only assume they are peeing in the pouch in the time I carry them around.(My girls never seem to be bothered with peeing in their pouch nor do they seem to get restless and want out to go pee.) Otherwise there is NO smell at all!
The cage I have them in has what I call a PooP Tray.I put newspaper in that PooP Tray to absorb their moisture and that doesn't smell either. . . . NO SMELL whatsoever in or around their cage. Their dropping are solidly formed and have the appearance of a mouse dropping though a little bigger around and a little longer.Course,by the time I see them they now appear to be on the black side though they may be a dark brown when first dropped and are only looking black because they are dried when I see them.

As far as the powdered Glider vitamins/minerals that came with the girls. . . should I be using this? Just as it doesn't hurt humans to be on the safe side and take daily vitamins wouldn't it be just as good for the Gliders to have their every other day vitamins/minerals?

I'll look over the HPW,Leadbeaters,Psittacine diets again and see if there are some modifications I can make that I feel better with verses the Chicken/Rice diet.
With that,I also wonder if this Glider Grub Staple Food may not be so bad based on what I hear you saying about a poor diet being some of a "smelly" Glider.

Tonight when shopping for menu items for the girls I got Cherries,Grapes,Romaine Lettuce,Turnip,Cucumbers,Bell Peppers,Carrots and Kiwi fruit. . .me and my 4yr old Grandson had a ball picking out food for my "Snicket" as we call them. I also stopped by the local Pet Store to check out insect prospects and while they had dried mealworms,grasshoppers and crickets they wanted more for them that I thought reasonable so I opted for 2 dozen tiny little brown crickets that I intend to hand singularly to each one of my girls.Those that they do not take in will be frozen/thawed out for another time.
I've fed pinkies to snakes before and was not opposed to feeding them to the girls but whereas I can see them eating crickets/grasshoppers
and worms I just can't see these sweet little creatures being of the nature to take down a pinkie though through the first few days of giving me blood drawing bites I feel sure they could do it with no issue whatsoever. Being someone who raises chickens and ocassionally hatch them out myself I can't see them eating day old chicks either but in the future when I have a chick that doesn't make it through the hatching process I might give it a try but right now I don't see that happening.

Should I be using the vitamins/minerals powder that came with the girls? Just as people take multivitamins,wouldn't this be kind of the same to Sugar Gliders?
With all of the explanations you have given me,the enlightenment that you have provided I am feeling like I now have enough information to make a more informed decision on what I need to feed the girls and feel more justified in giving them some of the diets that have been recommended.

I DO OWE YOU AN APOLOGY and I want to address that.
In your last post to me where you mentioned "rehashing" and "reinventing the wheel",I took you to say that I wasn't being willing to listen to those who had years of experience and that I was being hard headed and that I seemed bent on doing pretty much what I wanted to inspite of what I was being told.
You had told me in that same post to not take the post in a wrong way with what you were about to tell me and I did. . . I was the one at fault and not you so please forgive me.
I think you now understand the dilemmas I was facing and the confusion I was having with all I was reading but with all of the things you have now helped me to understand I'm feeling more confident in finding the right diet for my girls.



THANK YOU ! ! !

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you... I wasn't ignoring you, I had just been busy the past few days with the holidays and family, so I've gotten a little bit behind.

You are more than welcome... and don't worry, I didn't take offense at your reply, because as I've already mentioned, I understood where your frustration was coming from. That's why I took the time to write that post.

Now, in regards to some of your new questions/concerns...

There are no situations that suggest a sugar glider having issues with hypoglycemia/hyperglycemia so I really like your concerns about that are unfounded. It would be more common for a glider to have issues with their teeth if fed a high sugar diet then anything else. But again, HPW is used by a HUGE amount of glider owners and it is used sucessfully when combined with the appropiate 2:1 ratio of fruits and veggies. But even if you are still concerned about it being too much sugar, you can simply supplement half of the honey for apple sauce and still get the benefits of some of the honey and of couse the HPW itself.

No, the pellets you are looking at would be fine to give if you were not relying on it to be the primary source of nutrition for your gliders... but I can tell you, you will most likely be wasting your money because gliders that are being fed a solid established diet like BML, HPW, Leadbeaters, etc along with fruits and veggies usually want nothing to do with a dry food.

I can't answer the nutritious aspect in regards to this formula as I haven't seen an analysus on it... can you post one?

I glider on a bad diet won't necessarily smell bad, especially if its a female. It depends on just HOW bad the diet is. A glider can be very malnourished and still not smell putrid. So please don't take my comments about my previous experience with unnaturally stinky gliders as being gospel for every malnourished glider. It is NOT. Plus, you have girls, and girls never stink as bad as unneutered boys... even healthy ones.

Chances are, the smell you are noticing if they've been in their bonding pouch all day is just their natural musk. They are marking territory. But if you feel wetness, then yes, they are peeing. This is common when gliders are too freaked out to leave a place of safety to go to the bathroom so they choose to just pee in their pouch. I've also heard that it could also be that they were taken from their mothers at a very early age and never learned to pee away from the nest/pouch.

What kind of vitamin/mineral supplement came with them? I can't answer whether its a good idea to continue to give it to them unless I know what it is.

Also, be careful with feeding grapes/raisens. There is some pretty solid speculation that feeding this can lead to death for the same reasons grapes are poisonous to dogs and some other animals. Since finding this information out, I no longer feed grapes and do not have it in any of my recipes as I don't think its worth the risk.

And again, the practice of feeding live animals to gliders is an antiquated one. I strongly recommend against this when there are so many other ways of ensuring that your gliders are receiving enough protein.

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any more questions...

Based on ALOT of advise and partly due to some tight finances I am trying to feed "the girls" along the lines of suggested diets and here is what I'm doing. . .
I offer one bowl 24/7 with dry pellet food.Probably not more than 20 little pellets should I not be around when they get up during the day or if I have been away at work til after 10p. You are correct,they now rarely touch the dry pellet unless I have to work late and have not fed them the other stuff I mix up for them.
When I feed,I put out another bowl with about 10-15 dry pellets that have been soaked either with yogurt or water that I will use to mix baby cereal and smushed up to the consistency of baby cereal and then I mix in baby applesauce (about a third of what this mixture makes)
I put out another bowl with diced up sweet potato,cherries,grapes,
raisins,romaine lettuce,apple and grated carrots.
By morning time I see that the smushed up food is gone and so is most of the veggies/fruit mixture.

Since my last posting I've tried crickets(alive and frozen) and while I have seen some "greediness/territorialness" out of one of "the girls" as another poster suggested,they really don't seem to take to crickets any better than they take to hard boiled eggs.

Without writing down each and every ingredient for the vitmins/minerals I'll describe it as best I can. . . . . It does seem to have some dicalcium phosphorus,some zinc sulphate,source of Vit E,Vit B12,niacinamide,copper proteinate,potassium idodine,calcium carbonate,manganese proteinate,bacilus subtilus,laotobacilus acidophilus,thiaminemonoitraite,
folic acid,vitamin A acetate,d-activated animal starch (source of Vit D3) among other ingredients. It almost smells like some capsules of Calcium have been mixed in with some Malto Meal. It is off white with what looks like very few but present pieces of tiny brown pieces about the size of a salt grain.
With all of the phosphorus,calcium,zinc,copper,magnanese and vitamins and with the acidophilus,the bacilus's etc (which I know aid the health of the intestinal tract/digestion) I can't help but think this is a decent product.

In my efforts to work on bonding,when I am at home I roust the girls up 2-3 times a day to let them lick some chicken/applesauce babyfood from my fingers. Upon waking at night,before I go to bed or before they go to sleep in the morning I open the door to offer this treat and a couple of times I thought they might actually jump to meet me for the treat but then it is as if you can hear them say. . . .Ooooops,not yet. It is so heart warming and encouraging.

I knew that these little girls had probably not been fed properly or worked with on bonding when I got them.As I previously stated,they came from a house where they were located in a high traffic area used by adults,3 kids under the age of 8,2 cats and 4 dogs so I am assuming that their tiny bodies/tails were somewhat less than they should have been but in the last few days I have noticed them seemingly putting on alittle weight and their coats have that thick Chinchilla look and their tails are pretty.
Now don't misunderstand me,they aren't getting fat but perhaps alittle more filled out would be a better description. I think they are doing well.

Thanks so much for your assistance and I knew you were busy with the holidays so no apology for taking a day or two to answer me.

I can tell you that "Glider Grub" is nothing but corn and corn fillers and is very bad for gliders. Like Dahlia and I have both said, if you want to use a staple, get Evo cat or dog food as it is meat based and all natural. I do use Evo as part of their meal every night. Each of my gliders gets about 5-6 pieces of kibble. They love it and they normally eat it. I dont, however, keep it in their cage as a staple.

I, too, understand your confusion. When I purchased my first glider, I was told to feed Glider Grub and apples sprinkled with vitamins. I was horrified when I came here and was told I need to throw the Glider Grub in the trash. Darn! After all, I had purchased a whole year's worth of the stuff! But - after doing a little research myself - the whole year's worth of Glider Grub went into the trash. Good bye money - but hello healthier gliders.

Great post, Dahlia! Thank you!

Leaving the Wholesome Balance dry food in the cage 24/7 in case they look for food during the day or if they are hungry before you get home to give them their regular meal is a great idea.

You might want to use cooked eggs, chicken, turkey (or chicken or turkey baby meats) in your mixture with the baby cereal and applesauce instead of the Wholesome Balance to ensure your glider gets enough protein. This is basically what the BML, HPW and other recognized diet recipes have already calculated for you. They have been used over a long period of time and most folks feel they have 'proven' to maintain gliders good health for thousands of gliders over many, many years.

As for using the vitamins - if it is Vionate (this one is a part of the SunCoast diet which also uses the Wholesome Balance) it is probably safe to use. My concern with using the Vionate and the RepCal Calcium (when I used the SunCoast Diet) was that the directions, to 'sprinkle' them on one food such as the fruit or vegetable served each night, did not tell ME enough about the dosage amount. Sprinkle was too random for me as an RN to accept. It also made ME uncomfortable to think one glider may eat the fruit on the top and get more vitamin and calcium than the one who ate later from the bottom of the bowl.

I was more comfortable using KNOWN and MEASURABLE AMOUNTS of vitamins and minerals that could be mixed into the protein portion of the diet so that no mater how much a glider ate, he or she got a proportional share of the vitamins and minerals in the amount they ate. For this reason, I chose in developing my own glider's diet, to use the High Protein Wambaroo Powder as the source of the vitamins and a human grade calcium product to boost the calcium content. (BLENDED DIET www.gliderkids.com/BLENDED-GLIDER-DIET.html) This provided ME with the confidence that I have added the same amount of vitamins and calcium each time I prepare their food.

First off,let me explain that I'm having computer issues so I may not be back on for a bit until I get those issues resolved.
The vitamins I'm using is Vita Glider and it contains basically the ingredients I briefly described.

What are the directions for using Vita Glider? Does it tell you exactly how much to give each glider, how to give it to them and how often?

Well,have my computer issues resolved for the most part. . . I THINK. IF I slack in my replies bear with me,it's probably the computer BUT I'll be back.
The Vita Glider says to sprinkle small amount on fruits/veggies every other day.

Okay,I think all computer issues are resolved and I'm back.

I've tried once again to feed "the girls" some hard boiled egg and it was still a NO GO. I've offered it smushed up and added to baby cereal/applesauce and they eat around it. Just last night I offered it all by itself with just an opening in the shell tightly fit in a feeding bowl to keep it from rolling around and this morning I see 2 little teeth marks where they tried it but opted to leave it alone.
They don't seem to like Banana's either whether mushed up or whole.
The only way "the girls" will eat raisins is if I soak them and get them soft before dicing them up and adding them to their fruit/veggie mix.

Only 3 1/2 wks into this Glider Adventure so I have only just begun and will keep trying.. . . suspecting that this is the whole secret about feeding Sugar Gliders. . . finding a nutrious diet that they like.

The tight container around the bottom of the egg might not be helping you, Bella likes the fact that she can flip the egg over and she goes hand over fist to eating the yolk.

I don't think raisins are a good idea due to the fact that they are dehydrated, processed, and all that mess. Not to mention all the sugar, carbs, and such.

My problem when I first got Luna was if she didn't eat it one night, I wouldn't put it back in her bowl the next night. *buzz* Wrong, that's how they get picky. I was taught that you put it right back in there the next night, and if they're hungry they'll eat. You may be giving them too much food and too many choices as well.

Greattestgrammie - I understand you want to choose the foods to give your gliders. I am hearing however that there are things like eggs they do not eat. I am also hearing some frustration because your gliders are not eating the foods you are offering.

Please consider giving one of the recognized glider diets a try. They have been researched, provide balanced nutrition and good calcium to phosphorus ratios. They are not difficult to prepare and THOUSANDS of gliders have been fed these diets and LIKE them.

Here are the links (on my web page) to the recognized diets for you to look at. My own diet - the Blended Diet is also there if you would like to look at it as well. I have been told by several folks, including one rescue home, that even their picky gliders ate the blended diet right away.

www.gliderkids.com/contact.html

The most well balanced and varied diet in the world is worthless if the gliders do not eat what is offered.

Another thought on the sprinkled vitamins - some gliders will avoid the foods that have vitamins on the surface.

You also need to be including food withca higher calcium ratio, like papaya... Papaya is an absolute MUST in my book. No matter what else I feed in my fruit cocktail recipes, the papaya is ALWAYS present and in there as well in a higher contentration than any of the other fruits. It has to be if I'm feeding a wide variety every night as it's needed to balance out the ratios.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dahlia_2020

You also need to be including food withca higher calcium ratio, like papaya... Papaya is an absolute MUST in my book. No matter what else I feed in my fruit cocktail recipes, the papaya is ALWAYS present and in there as well in a higher contentration than any of the other fruits. It has to be if I'm feeding a wide variety every night as it's needed to balance out the ratios.

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I agree..I always have papaya in every fruit mix I make/use.

Well I guess it is pretty safe to say that I'm kinda making the Leadbeaters Diet for "my girls" with a little variation.
I soak a few pellets of the dry food so I can mix them yogurt/baby cereal. Tonight I add boiled egg paste. Before serving I add applesauce and mix it all up. "The girls" seem to be able to figure out just how much of my mixture is of the soaked pellets and seem to eat around it.
I have yet to get "the girls" to eat hard boiled eggs regardless of how I have served them so we'll see if I can sneak it past them this evening.

In another bowl I offer treats. . . diced Sweet Potato,Bell Pepper,Cucumber,Romaine Lettuce,Apple,Kiwi,Turnips,Soaked Raisins,Pitted Cherries and Grapes. I offer this every night and vary what I mix and for the most part the next morning the bowl is empty. I sprinkle this treat mixture with vitamins/minerals every other night though I have forgotten a time or two.
Throughout the day I offer dead crickets and the "Liquid Gold" mixture of chicken/applesauce babyfood.

I'm going to step out there and ask. . . . . What say ya'll?

Same thing we've been saying... Leave out the pellets, they aren't eating them anyway. They need more protein, so if they won't eat the eggs hardboiled, try scrambled. A staple diet would be better for them, as it would help ensure a decent protein source. You need to feed some food that is higher in calcium like papaya and bok choy as they aren't getting enough calcium. A lot of the stuff you are feeding has a backwards ratio. Also be aware that if you feed grapes and raisens you might be hurting them. There is some pretty solid speculation at the moment about them being toxic.

quote:

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Originally posted by Greatestgrammie

Thank you Snusie,this totally explains the Lactose Issue which I could not understand. Getting my girls to eat yogurt made me feel like I had all but poisoned them since I had always considered yogurt to be a dairy product.

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With cottage cheese and yogurt they also contain active cultures, that is why people who are lactose intolerant can eat both, because the active cultures assist in the digestion of the lactose parts of the yogurt and cottage cheese. (I have a friend who is lactose intolerant and she looked into why she can eat yogurt).