The LGRS Suggie Soup is an economical, lower-fat, lower cholesterol, higher calcium, higher protein recipe than similar recipes that use expensive, imported ingredients. This is the standard recipe for all rescues and animals being rehabilitated at Lucky Glider Rescue & Sanctuary. You can dilute the finished product with water and syringe feed it to gliders who are suffering from metabolic bone disease or hind leg paralysis. It is important to first take malnourished gliders to the vet as they are often candidates for a subcutaneous calcium injection and other treatments.
Batches and Freezing
One "batch" of this recipe will produce about 7 cups. With a two tablespoon serving per glider per day, a batch would last a pair gliders two months, depending on waste. You need to keep the bulk of your batch frozen and only transfer amounts needed for a few days at a time into the refrigerator. Please note that as a rescue we err on the side of over-feeding especially when nursing malnourished rescues back to health You may be able to cut back the portions to a tablespoon and a half if the glider is generally healthy. You can water the formula down if they are getting fat. A full grown adult male should be about 150 grams. Gliders that get out of their cage every night and exercise for a few hours usually don't get fat.
DISCLAIMER:
— Show this recipe to your veterinarian.
— Let your veterinarian decide if its contents are good for your pet.
— LGRS Suggie Soup is only one part of an overall diet plan.
— See the compote section to learn more on foods to feed with the soup.
Veterinarians: a comprehensive nutritional analysis of LGRS Suggie Soup is
published on [1]
Ingredients
1 cup of canned Mango juice or liquefied fresh Mango
1 cup of canned Papaya juice or liquefied fresh Papaya
2 cups of Calcium & Vitamin D fortified Orange Juice
2 cups of Filtered Honey (see footnote 1)
1/4 cup of Plain, Low-Fat Yogurt (kind with 12g protein per half pint)
1 small scrambled egg
1 Tablespoon of Trader Darwin's Vanilla Flavored Soy (see footnote 2)
1 Tablespoon of powdered, Dehydrated Fly Pupae (see footnote 3)
2 Tablespoons of powdered Bee Pollen (see footnote 4)
Preparation
1. Cook and scramble egg, set aside to cool
2. With a blender, powder the bee pollen and dehydrated fly pupae together so it is one fine powder and set aside
3. Warm honey using a hot water bath method or microwave.
4. Mix warmed honey and juices in blender
5. Add protein powder and yogurt to the juice and honey mixture. Blend till smooth [depending on the size of your blender. You may need to blend the rest in stages]
6. Add egg and pollen/pupae mix into the liquid ingredients. Blend until smooth.
7. Pour into small freezer-safe containers for freezing use containers that you can put in the fridge with enough to last two or three days. If you have two gliders who will only eat two tablespoons per serving, those containers can be pretty small. You can freeze the soup in ice cube trays and pop the frozen cubes into freezer bags.
RECIPE FOOTNOTES
1. Do not use raw, comb, or unfiltered honey. Look for the word "filtered" or "pasteurized" on the label.
2. A nutritional analysis of Trader Darwin’s Vanilla Flavored Soy is on this web page: [2] If you cannot get this item in your area, other vitamin fortified soy isolate products will work, but compare them and try to come close to this nutritional profile.
3. Available from Oregon Feeder Insects Inc. 866.641.8938 www.OregonFeederInsects.com
NOTE DO NOT GET THE "LIVE" LARVAE OR PUPAE. GET THE DEHYDRATED PUPAE
4. Available on line at www.BulkFoods.com or local health food or vitamin stores
A Word on Fruit and Veggie and Meat Compotes
You should also offer a compote of properly balanced Fruits, Veggies and Meat on the side of the soup. Offer two tablespoons per glider. Watch out for high Ph contents of meats. Must offset so overall Ca:Ph ratio is 2:1
For compote examples see:
http://www.sugarglider.com/nutrition/publicrecipes.asp
Properly balanced compote recipes on the site include:
- CornPapayaExample (Lucky Glider)
- Eric's Example recipe (Eric Coleman)
There are also some cool smoothies from Dahlia up there too
Another Disclaimer:
There will be other recipes on the public recipes page at sugarglider.com. Just being there does not make them automatically correct. You have to check. Inside of each recipe's nutritional analysis, be sure to scroll down and ensure there is twice as much calcium as there is phosphorus. That's the general rule of thumb. Dark green vegetables have good calcium, but it is cancelled out by the oxalates, so don't use dark green veggies for their Ca content.
Misleading Ratio Warning
Many dark, green leafy vegetables such as spinach and turnip greens tout high amounts of Ca and a favorable Ca:Ph ratio. This is misleading. Dark, green leafy vegetables are usually high in oxalates. This substance is known to bind to, and prevent the digestion of Calcium in the host plant. This means despite the “high” Calcium content, between 90 and 100 percent of it will not be available to metabolize.
Results
Here at Lucky Glider Rescue & Sanctuary, we have been using variations of this basic recipe since 2007. Early in 2007 we fed the HPW diet but later made adjustments accounting for our desire to improve the calcium ratio and to reduce the cholesterol from the eggs. The “before and after” photos below show how well gliders respond to a high protein diet such as HPW or LGRS. The example of Dottie on the top shows the favorable “before and after” results of using HPW (We are saying we were happy with the results of HPW 2 years ago). The before and after shots of Toolah and Picachu are examples of favorable results using LGRS suggie soup.
Here is a link to before and after photos: