If there is one area of sugar glider care that I just cannot stop thinking about is their diet. I think because that is the one area that affects their life more than anything else. They must have a healthy diet to survive. All the best toys, cages, rooms, aviaries, pouches, exercise, don’t mean a thing if they are not eating a healthy diet.
I also cannot seem to let the subject rest because the “experts” really do not know the best way. The “experts” cannot even agree on healthy human diets let alone a small exotic animal kept as a pet for the past 20 years or so. There are also so many “diets” out there in the glider community and they all seem to work equally well. One group will swear one diet is better while another group will swear it is not as good as another and you should switch. Then there is the problem of the sugar gliders themselves. You could put the best diet in front of a sugar glider, and if they refuse to eat it, what good does it do? Of if you cannot find all the ingredients needed to even make the diet?
No one seems to know what the “recommended daily amounts” are for sugar gliders. We have a percentage amount for protein from some studies and observations in this area and it seems that proteins make up about 20% of a wild sugar glider diet. We also know that keeping the calcium to phosphorous ratios at a good level in of prime importance (somewhere between 1:1 and 2:1 seem to be acceptable). What makes writing any diet so hard, is a nutrient can be good, necessary in fact, but where it gets hard is too much is harmful just as too little of the same is also harmful.
So I am constantly reviewing my diet plan for my sugar gliders. It seems as though I do a minor “re-write” of it every 6 months or so. It has nothing to do with my gliders health. There was only one time I saw a change in coat condition in my gliders, and am not sure it was directly related to diet. When I replaced the one component I had removed (yogurt), there was no change in the coat condition, even after many months. So I stopped giving it to them and altered a few other things in my diet, and the condition seemed to improve.
As for the change in the coat that occurred, I state I do not think it was diet related for there were other factors at the time that may have been the cause. Introduction to a new glider play room (was that scary and stressful for them till they learned it was theirs and had it properly “marked”), change in the season and humidity levels in the house, since it was really only the joeys, was it something in their physical development (the “bloom“ of youth)?
My sugar gliders have thick soft coats. I get concerned about the “cracking” effect when they are running around. There was a point in the glider community when that was considered an indication of an unhealthy diet or other problem. I do not think this is solely the case anymore. It seems that there are other factors than just diet that can affect the coat. Humidity levels were mentioned as affecting the coat, dry conditions seem to create more “crackling” in the fur. I am sure genetics play a huge roll. Just like people, perhaps sugar gliders can just have better fur than others no matter what. I have been comparing pictures of sugar gliders for 2 years now and it seems even those that are considered the healthiest have some “cracking” in their fur, especially around the shoulder and hip areas. Watching videos of sugar gliders inn the wild, show they have some as well. And since I truly believe since God designed them, He knows how feed them the best diet.
Back to diets…
Part of the problem with my diet, is I like to feed a lot of weird exotic fruits. I like them, the sugar gliders like them, and they are usually packed with nutrients not found in the “local” fruit stand. So I included them in my diet, but realized anyone wanting to follow my diet may not be able to. Even in my area I sometimes have a hard time finding certain fruits due to the seasons, so I am constantly buying and freezing or dehydrating them in an attempt to have them available all the time.
So I have tried to take out of my diet plan some of the more exotic fruits, as well as I was attempting to lower the sugars just a bit in the overall diet. I have also tried to hide acacia gum powder wherever I can in their diet, as some report that it helps to aid in calcium absorption, as well as being a source of calcium itself. So when I mash up anything soft like squash or sweet potato, in goes a spoonful of acacia powder.
The other problem with some diets is that a few are written with a “staple” and a side dish of fruits and veggies. Some of these staples are written with very high amounts of calcium to help offset the consumption of the side dish. Others are written on the lower end and the side dish helps to make up the difference. The problem I see with that is what if only the staple is eaten? Or only the side dish? You will have a sugar glider who is getting too much or too little of what they need. If you have a cage with 2 gliders, unless you sit and watch them every night, one could be eating all the staple and the other could be eating all the side dish. With my diet plan, that wouldn’t be a problem.
Some say to offer less variety. I have a hard time with this as well. I think variety is key in a captive environment, to not only have a better chance at filling in any nutritional “holes” but also to give the sugar glider a chance to self regulate, even if in a very small degree. I also feel the variety is nice as they have such a small environment to live in as it is, let us give them something exciting and new in their dinner plate!
I tried to write a diet that would allow plenty of variety. I also wanted a diet that was written in such a way that I wouldn’t panic if they refused to eat the staple a couple of nights. So I guess you could say my diet has 3 staples. There is the glider nectar, the glider stew, and the veggies/fruits rotations. Each of these components is complete in and of itself. Or as close to being complete so as to not cause alarm if they skip one component a few times. I also wrote my diet to go on a four day rotation, and totaled the nutritional value over those 4 days, as in the wild sugar gliders will not eat the same thing everyday, but whatever is available. Each of my staples, however, do target a specific nutritional need so it is best to incorporate all 3 and not leave one out. The nectar targets the need for sugars/carbs in the diet and the maple syrup gives a good punch to the calcium requirements. The stew targets the need for proteins. The veggy/fruit just kind of rounds it all out and gives the variety I was looking for.
Now I know it seems like I actually have 4 staples as I include a small portion of the “Bugs and Berries Diet” with my “additives” of dried blue berry and papaya. I wrote the nutritional values for my diet and did not include the bugs and berries as I do not have the information for that particular component. Oh I tried to obtain it, but unfortunately the company would not give me the detailed information I needed for it. You can very well feed my diet without the Bugs and Berries Diet and from the figures not worry about them “needing” it. I choose to still feed a small amount as my sugar gliders REALLY like it, and I figure it just bumps all my values up just a tad and makes the nutritional values of the diet even better. As well as provides good nutrition for those days my fur kids do not want to eat all their veggies! All my figures for my diet also do not include the values for the “booster milk” or the “glider aide” for the same reasons. The small amount of these added supplements just help in fill in any holes created by variations such as not eating all of another component, loss of nutritional value due to freezing foods, mistakes in any computations, cutting fruits too small or other miss-measuring, and such. If you choose to feed my diet and NOT include the Bugs and Berries, you may need to up the amounts fed of the other components just a bit, if your sugar gliders still act hungry. This will of course up your values a tiny bit, but will keep your ratios the same.
I was also trying to target what I felt to be the best ratio. We are all told that anywhere from 1:1 to 2:1 is best. So I attempted to write a diet that fell right in the middle of those low to high ranges for ratios.
I have created a chart to help you to compare my diet to other common diets. I have compiled the information about other diets with the help of Candy Otte the creator of the “Blended Diet” which is a diet she created with that same goal in mind, to create a diet that fell in the middle of the two most popular BML and HPW diets.
The next section is a comparison of the common diets per serving. The last column shows the ratios, the value given is :1, for example in the first chart is says 1.44, that would be 1.44:1 ratio of calcium to phosphorous.
COMPARISON OF "COMMON" DIETS
INFORMATION COMPILED WITH HELP OF CANDY OTTE
information is for one serving
calories carbs sugars protein calcium phos ratio:1
BML n/a n/a 3.5 - 1.0 - 59.4 - 18.79 - 3.16
HPW n/a n/a 3.11 - 0.28 - 4.47 - 4.68 - 0.96
Candy's n/a n/a 2.48 - 0.67 - 25.25 - 10.95 - 2.31
Judie's n/a n/a 3.06 - 0.84 - 49.25 - 15.52 - 3.17
Reeps n/a n/a 0.52 - 0.77 - 12.32 - 10.23 - 1.20
Pockets n/a n/a 6.98 - 0.43 - 7.57 - 7.43 - 1.02
Zookeepers n/a n/a 0 - 1.75 - 17.5 - 8.75 - 2.00
JMC's 23.85 5.30 2.08 - 0.58 - 13.00 - 9.43 - 1.38
As you can see from this information, that the JMC diet is a well balanced diet, very comparable to many of the common diets being used in the sugar glider community. Remember my values may be a tad higher as certain supplements were not included in my calculations but are a part of the diet recipes!
I hope this has helped you in some way, and if you choose to follow my diet plan I would love to hear your success or failure stories, as all will contribute to taking better care of our sugar gliders.
Be Blessed!
For my information I relied on a few sources, most with help from Candy Otte, her diet information can be found here: Glider Kids
