Marg...I dont suppose you want to ship me

[DammitJanet]

Some sugar glider food do you? It appears you may be right smack dab in the middle of this lil guys feeding ground...lol.

I think you have all this in your back yard.

Honeydew
A white, carbohydrate rich sticky sustance that is secreted by aphids and some scale insects found on Eucalypt leaves.
Lerps
Small bugs that live on gum leaves
Manna
A sweet tasting, honeydew like liquid secreted by sap-sucking insects, that when dried forms manna;
Fungi
Eucalyptas Sap
This is obtained by stripping of the bark.
Pollen
The powdery substance found on a flower's stamen.
Nectar A sugar rich liquid produce by flowers. Favourite nectar rich flowers of the Sugar Glider are Bottlebrush, Grevellia, Flowering Gum, Banksia, and Grass Tree(flowering stem).
Acacia (Wattle) Gum
The Gum is produced in response to damage or wound to the Acacia tree. Sugar Gliders chew the trunk of the Acacia tree to stimulate the flow of its gum, which they then consume. Wattle Gum is not easily digested because of its high Tannin properties. But, because Sugar Gliders consume a great deal of wattle gum they have an enlarged ceacum, larger than other, similar feeding species. The enlarged ceacum helps to faciliatate microbial fermentation of these types of foods.
Acacia (Wattle) Seeds

 

[GoingNorth]

Janet, google "sugar glider food" and I think you will find a lot of hits. They were quite popular as pets until people caught up to the fact they they are very fragile and also smelly.

 

[Marguerite]

Can you guys get Aussie sugar gliders in the US? Not sure how that could be possible, not legally. OK, it would be legal for you to purchase them from someone else in the US, but at some level, it's probably been smuggled. As for the list - yes, we have it all.

But if you happen to have one now, you can get by with food other than Aussie native food.

They shouldn't be smelly as pets, though. It all depends on what you feed them and how you look after them.

A lot of Aussie native animals are lactose intolerant. You need to be careful there. We get special modified milk if we're feeding an orphan. I suggest you Google for info from US-based websites as well as Aussie ones, because the Aussie sites will tell you to go cut some native flowers for them. Not helpful. From what I recall, most fruit & vegetables will be fine. A natural diet is going to be better than a packaged food, in my opinion. Cheaper, too.

Here is what appears to be a useful link.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Sugar-Gliders-3567/Feeding-Sugar-Glider.htm

Ironic, really. We're not allowed to keep them as pets here in Australia. We can encourage wild ones to be tamed, but we're only allowed to keep wild ones if we have a licence AND they are being cared for until they can be released back into the wild.

Frankly, I think it would be much better in so many ways if we COULD keep them as pets. It would have to be better for the species, especially if (as with birds) we had to prove they had been specially bred for pets and not merely rounded up from the wild (which is where so many die, when they get rounded up to be smuggled as pets).

I've handled pet ones, though - a professor of ours had a number of pet marsupials he brought with him. He was researching breeding, which is how he got his pets in under the radar, so to speak. Mind you, I wasn't going to pat his Eastern Quoll - aka native cat.

They are nocturnal creatures, I hope she behaves herself at night for you. The professor kept his in a nocturnal room, we went in to see the animals in artificial twilight.

They ARE cute, aren't they?

Marg

 

[DammitJanet]

I wondered about the legality but they must be legal here because there are so many websites associated with Suggies as they are referred to...lol.

Someone was selling a threesome up where Tony and the guys are working and Cory and another guy bought them. Cory got one of them and the cage and the other guy took the other two because he already has a cage. This lil guy is named Rocky. He is adorable! So sweet. I already looked up a diet that doesnt look to awful hard to make up with some honey and apple juice and stuff in it. Of course, fruit and veggies. Oh and some meal worms and a moth or two...lol. Moths should be easy...just leave the light on at night outside.

Since he is a singlet now, Cory has to play with him A LOT which is probably going to tick off Mandy since she is terrified of the thing...lol. This chick is scared of most critters. She practically passed out when she saw our iguana. I can deal with anything but a snake.

 

[svengandhi]

My son's friend worked at a children's museum this summer and one of his jobs was caring for the sugar gliders. He is away right now but I can ask him what they feed their gliders at the museum and post the answer.

 

[Marguerite]

The legality issue - I need to check, but to the best of my knowledge, they are not allowed out of Australia unless to zoos by previous and detailed bureuacratic arrangement. So the smuggling trade is huge. Since so much of our airport security is now looking at what comes IN to the country, we're far less vigilant about what goes out.

You might think - no big deal, tosmuggle animals or birds out. But smugglers getsuch a huge payoff for these animals (because of the resultant rarity factor) that they allow for a lot of deaths in transit. They are shipped secretly, sedated, in specially made packages generally in the hold luggage. It's been estimated that about 90% die.

That's why I strongly beleive we should allow legitimate export, to drop the bottom out of the smuggling trade. They would still be capturing wild creatures but in a controlled way with an eye to the numbers in tat area, and you would have a 90% survival rate instead of a 90% mortality rate. Transport would be more humane, also.

Now, we don't have diseases like rabies here, so creatures arriving from Australia would not be a quarantine issue (except our bats - we have a disease called Lyssa virus which is potentially fatal). I don't know if our marsupials are capable of contracting rabies or similar diseases. In Australia they occupy a similar ecological niche to squirrels orchipmunks. So whatever diseases squirrels or chipmunks can get, I would check to see if our gliders can get. But the thing is - these are marsupials. They are actually a lot more different to squirrels, than they are similar. More different than they seem. I'm not certian, but I think our marsupials tend to be more short-lived as individuals, than placentals.

Breeding them is tricky. You often need multiple pairs, often of different species. I have a funny story to tell about that (another time). If you had a tape-recording of mating calls plus the exact right environmental conditions, you could get some surprise breeding success.

If they are tame, they are absolutely darling to handle. It should happily ride around on your shoulder especially if you have bribes of fruit. Find out if tey can eat dried fruit pieces (like the sort you can feed parrots). That make great training tools.

I was raising a Brushtail Possum some years ago, it was an orphan which was to be released back into the wild when I was done. I wore bib and brace overalls and the possum rode around either tucked inside the bib of my overalls, or on my shoulder. Sometimes on my head (if a dog went past and it panicked). I had a pocket of pelletised chicken feed and I would hand it a pellet from time to time. Tucked in the bib, sometimes a little hand would reach out asking for a pellet.
But gliders are much more obligate fruit eaters, unlike the omnivorous possum.

Enjoy your darling.

Marg