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CHOW TIME!
Copyright by: kazko, 2007 |
Sugar glider husbandry has not existed long enough in North America to be able to answer the question on what is the best diet. Most of the diets you read about will essentially try to emulate the wild diet by using available Western ingredients. Most of the diet plans will include a nectar replacement and will try to provide the right balance of lean proteins, carbs and nutrients with a guess as to what is the correct amounts.
At this point in time it is a best guess as to which diet will suit your needs. Some require the purchase of expensive mixes or additives while others try their best to suit the needs of the animals with off the shelf ingredients.
Two things do seem to appear in all diet discussions: the need to balance calcium/phosphorus and the need for variety to mimic a natural, broad, perhaps seasonal forage. Some diet plans will suggest a heavy supplementing of calcium to offset the high phosphorus of the Western food choices while other plans may suggest very little to no need for supplementing based on their picks of low phosphorus items.
Some discussion has been seen as to the possible ill effects of over-supplementing which is easy to do for the uninitiated. The tiny bodies of sugar gliders can be easily affected by adding too much of a thing and it is common for the liver to be damaged causing early death. So perhaps time will show that instead of adding supplements, one should simply choose food items that do not block the absorption of calcium.
The best sugar glider diet is your choice to make. You really need to do a lot of reading and learn and compare and make your best educated guess based on your circumstances. One thing does hold true across all diet plans; if they wont eat it, it is not going to be doing them any good. So be sure to get your animal eating no matter what it takes and then you can take your time to experiment with different diet plans and see what works for you.
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