Before I start this discussion of the Leadbeater's Diet, the PML diet, the HPW diet, and Wombaroo High Protein Supplement, I want to point out that this discussion of diets is not meant in any way to put down or insult the creators of those diets.  In fact it should be considered a compliment that I chose these 3 diets to base a healthy diet on.  I also want to point out that the HPW diet discussed here is the original recipe made with the Wombaroo powder, and NOT the HPW Plus and HPW Complete powders that are now available to us.  Please do not use these figures as anything more than a comparison.

ALWAYS CONSULT WITH A GLIDER EXPERIENCED VET BEFORE FEEDING ANY DIET! 

There seems to never be an end to the debates on what makes a healthy sugar glider diet.  Since I can never let this matter rest in my own head, I have decided to delve into the subject once again (truth be told, I never stop thinking about it).

I decided to go about this one by a different route however.  While I constantly have the native/natural diet in mind, I decided to look at the “Leadbeater’s Diet” to start with.  Leadbeaters possums are a marsupial very similar to sugar gliders.  Physically they look almost the same.  Differences in physical appearance are the leadbeaters are usually larger and lack the patagium, or gliding membrane, of sugar gliders.  Behavior, diet, and many other traits of the leadbeaters are very similar to sugar gliders as well.

I decided I needed to read more about the first person who successfully bred the leadbeaters in captivity and that would be Des Hackett.  He was certainly the first to breed and keep them successfully.  In fact, according to the book “Bred to be Wild” Mr. Hackett was instrumental in not only providing zoos with more animals, but also plans for enclosures, nest boxes, guidelines for general care, and diet instructions.  His instructions were so successful when followed that zoos began to have more possums than they could keep.  Unfortunately, release programs at the time were not implemented, and many of the leadbeaters died as a result of overcrowding.

Even though I wanted to look at the “leadbeaters diet” I also did not want to ignore the diets successfully used for sugar gliders in captivity in more recent times.  I am not a nutritionist.  So I used many resources on the internet to help me.  First was this USDA link:
 http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/
This was a huge help to me for something like this.  This is a great tool as you do not have to do any converting for measurements.  You can actually choose your measurement type and size and get the nutritional facts for that specific food and amount.

In the few places I did need to do some converting, these links were a big help as well:
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/
http://curezone.com/conversions.asp

Some foods are not included in the USDA database, obviously the Wombaroo powder is not, and bee pollen is not included either.  The data for the bee pollen was taken from this site:
http://www.alternativescentral.com/beepollen.htm

The nutritional data on the Wombaroo was taken from an email sent to me by Rich from the Wombaroo company in Australia.  I noticed that some measurements have slightly different conversions going from common measurements used in the US compared to Australia, I am sure that if this affects the accuracy of the amounts, it is a tiny and minimal amount.

I decided to compare 3 diets. To be fair, these “staple” diets are meant to be fed along side a mixture of fruits and vegetables, which does affect the nutritional value of the “whole” diet.  But I wanted to compare the nutritional value of the “staples” alone.   I gathered the values for each ingredient in each recipe, giving me the totals for a whole “batch” of that specific recipe.  But to do a fair comparison I then figured out what the nutritional analysis would be for 1 gram of that recipe (even though a serving size may be more than a gram).   I guess you could say I wanted a “baseline” comparison.  

I need to point out that the amounts for sugars and vitamin A and vitamin D did have some values missing from some ingredients, as well as I had some issues in measurement conversions, so the figures are approximate for those 3 nutrients.

The 3 diets I decided to compare is the Leadbeaters, Pocket’s PML, and HPW (the original recipe).  I decided not to compare the BML diet, as I do not have the information I need on the specific vitamins (the rep-cal) used for that diet.  Another reason I decided to do this is I really wanted to compare these basic diets to the diet I designed, and doing so showed me I really needed to add an egg to my batch!  I also wanted to discover if there was an average amount for necessary nutrients, in amounts that seem to be working well over years and have been figured out by respected “experts” in the area of sugar glider diets.  A sort of RDA if you will.

To do this I also purchased Wombaroo powder so that I could weigh and measure it for myself.  I found one thing interesting with the Leadbeater’s diet, Since I had no idea what vitamin mineral mix he was using, I substituted the Wombaroo, the 25 grams cereal plus the 1 teaspoon Wombaroo equals about 28 grams, which is ¼ cup and is the same as the amount used in the HPW recipe!

Using a simple kitchen scale (that measures in 10 gram increments) I found that 1 teaspoon of Wombaroo is about 2 grams, 1 tablespoon is about 8 grams or ¼ ounce, ¼ cup is 28 grams or 1 ounce, and ½ cup is 59 grams or 2 ounces.

I want to include at this point a copy of the nutritional data on the Wombaroo powder as was provided to me by the company:

This information is for 1 kilogram (=1000 grams) of powder:
protein 520 grams
fat 120 grams
fiber 30 grams
vitamin C 200 milligrams
vitamin A 400 ug (micrograms)
vitamin D3 80 ug (micrograms)
vitamin K1 9 milligrams
vitamin E 70milligrams
vitamin B3 200 milligrams
vitamin B5 75 milligrams
vitamin B1 30 milligrams
vitamin B6 12 milligrams
Riboflavin 10 milligrams
vitamin B12 150 ug (micrograms)
folic acid 5 milligrams
calcium 13 grams
phosphorous 9 grams
potassium 4 grams
sodium 2 grams
magnesium 600 milligrams
iron 8 milligrams
zinc 25 milligrams
manganese 12 milligrams
copper 5 milligrams
selenium 150 ug (micrograms)

These are the recipes for the diets as originally written with weights of ingredients: (all eggs are hard boiled and shell removed)

ORIGINAL LEADBEATERS
150 ml water (150.258g)
150 ml honey (214.926g)
1 egg (50g)
25 grams baby cereal
1 teaspoon vitamin and mineral mix (2.5g)
Please Note: in this recipe specific baby cereal and vitamin mix was not specified, or not obtainable for me.
I used mixed grain baby cereal and Wombaroo for the vitamin mix.

The original recipe did not use wombaroo powder.

Due to conflicting information I used the wombaroo powder in my calculations just to obtain a "baseline" comparison.

POCKETS’S PML
1 ¾ cup water (414.75g)
1 ¾ cup honey (593.25g)
2 eggs (100g)
30 grams Wombaroo

HPW
2 cups water (474 g)
1 ½ cups honey (508.5g)
3 eggs (150g)
¼ cup Wombaroo (28g)
1 tablespoon bee pollen (7.5g)

JMC’S DIET
½ cup water (118.48g)
¼ cup honey (84.75g)
¼ cup NATURAL maple syrup (78.75g)
¼ cup baby cereal (10 g)
1 tablespoon ground flax seed (7g)
½ teaspoon Wombaroo (1.5g)
2 teaspoon bee pollen (5g)
1 egg (50g)
1 ½ tablespoon acacia gum powder (not included in analysis)

I want to start out by asking that if any one see any errors in ANY of the information in this article, or errors in any calculations, please notify me ASAP so that it can be corrected.

I didn’t want to do calculations for every nutrient, so I picked my favorite 10 to look at: sugars, fat, protein, sodium, selenium, iron, calcium, phosphorous, vitamin A, and vitamin D.
 
Those nutrients in 1k of Wombaroo is as follows, and are the figures used in my calculations.  Values in all following tables will be expressed in measurements shown below.  Empty spaces indicate zero values, or missing/incomplete data.

Wombaroo High Protein Supplement, 1k=1000 grams:

Calculations used: (for example to figure values for ¼ cup Wombaroo powder)

1k = 1000 g               ¼ cup = 28 grams
To figure values for ¼ cup: 1000 divided by 28 (the amount of times a ¼ cup goes into 1000g) =  35.714
Values for 1000 g are then divided by 35.714 to give you the value for that nutrient in 28 g (or ¼ cup)
All values are calculated to 3 decimal places, the only rounding off I did was in the per gram value and the final comparison chart. 

To calculate “per gram” the total values for nutrients are divided by total weight of recipe/batch.  Per gram values were used to figure ca:ph ratios.

Pocket’s PML: Total weight = 1138 g  *Ratio 1.11:1
For 30 grams Wombaroo, 30 grams goes into 1000 grams 33.33 times.  Values for 1000g Wombaroo divided by 33.33 to get values for the 30 grams used in recipe.

Please note: I have a new nectar recipe! I no longer use the one shown on this page.  The new recipe is just easier to make!  All of my recipe can be found HERE, the newest recipes are at the top of the page

Before I go into the values of the JMC diet, I wanted to share a few comparisons of the sugar content of NATURAL maple syrup and honey.  Values are given for ¼ cup of each:

Important note:  ONLY NATURAL Maple Syrup should be used!  "Table Blends" such as "Log Cabin" and "Aunt Jemima" and store brands are mostly corn syrup and are NOT healthy for your sugar glider and will NOT have the nutritional value as Natural maple syrup.

JMC’s Diet: Total weight = 355.48  *Ratio 1.16:1

My original recipe had a ratio of 1.74:1 which I was very happy with.  But the values for Vit A, Vit D and selenium were too low for my liking.  Adding I egg to my recipe took care of those values, but also lowered the ratio quite a bit.

So now to see the “base line” comparison of each diet.  Remember that the comparison is on ONE gram of each diet, and individual serving sizes as well as the fruits and vegetables, pellets, and treats, fed with each diet will effect the over-all nutritional value of the diet.  I am currently working on the calculations to do a "serving" comparison.

So there are the numbers.  I appreciate hearing your constructive thoughts on this information.  I want to stress at this time again this was not done to prove one diet was better than another.  It was done just to compare.  As you can see for yourself, the values are quite similar.