11/01/2020
A quick glance at what's necessary to own sugar gliders. I will continue to update as necessary.
THINGS TO KNOW:
-they are nocturnal
-they can live about 10-15 years, owning them is commitment!
-they can make many noises, some much louder than you would expect and often while you or others in your house are sleeping
-they can not be litter trained, they will "mark" you with little dribbles of p*e, that's how they say I love you. Do not attempt to put any sort of diaper on them
- they can NOT be put on a harness or leash- this will cause them a lot of stress and potentially harm their gliding membrane.
HOUSING:
-a large cage
-height is more important than width
-large doors on the front to make cleaning and adding/removing items from the cage easier
-bar spacing no wider than 1cm
- horizontal bars are prefered over vertical bars but both are acceptable
-a cage with a drop pan that can be pulled out will make cleaning easier
WHEELS:
There are several safe models of wheels available online. Unfortunately it is highly unlikely that you will be able to find a suitable wheel in a pet store. Sugar gliders have long tails and a wing like membrane that stretches between their front and back legs- these can easily be caught up in gaps, rungs and centre bars that most hamster type wheels have. Gliders also do not really "run" they jump from one side of their wheel to the other,straight through the middle, and ride it back around to the mid point to jump again.
CAGE SETS, BONDING POUCHES:
Cage sets are sets of several items like fleece vines, hammocks, sleeping pouches, hanging cubes and tunnels to hang in the cage for gliders to sleep and play on. Cage sets and sleeping pouches should ideally be made of anti-pill/blizzard/polar fleece to prevent the gliders nails from getting caught in loose fibres. Although cotton or flannel can be used, they require a little more work to make them safe.
All sewn items for sugar gliders should be made with small, tight, hidden seams to prevent their nails from getting caught and lesson the chance that they can get to the thread and cut it with their teeth. Exposed, loose stitches or loose threads pose and serious risk to gliders, a thread can easily get wrapped around a toe or tail and cut off circulation, get caught in teeth or entangle them- and they around known to chew off limbs to free themselves.
Bonding pouches are similar to sleeping pouches but have a zipper to close the top and often a little window made of plastic hardware mesh or airholes made with grommets. A bonding pouch allows you to safely carry your sugar glider around with you during the day at home or out and about (without the risk of them escaping) to help them get to know your voice and smell while they sleep. Bonding pouches can be made in a bag style, scarf style, sewn into the pocket of a hoodie etc to allow you to bond with your glider whatever way works best for you. **note: if you are taking your gliders out in the bonding pouch for more than an hour or so be sure to offer them water often, and give them apple slices or other juicy fruit to avoid dehydration. If temperatures are fairly high or low it's best to leave them safely at home. **
TOYS: will be updated shortly**
DIET:
There are many recommended diets like TPG, BML, OHPW etc. Most of them involve items you can find at a grocery store, and then order some special vitamins/supplement online. A straight pellet diet is not suited for them. I feed the TPG diet and that is what I am most familiar with, if you are interested in feeding a different diet don't hesitate to send me a different message and I will connect you with someone familiar with that diet.
I prefer the TPG diet as I feel it provides more variety and the ingredients are easy to find in grocery stores. The vitamin supplement is necessary and needs to be ordered online.
Although pellets are not to be fed as the staple part of their diet, you may choose to offer a very small amount during the day a couple times a week or use a few pellets each night as foraging treats. Offering quality pellets or monkey biscuits occasionally is also beneficial to dental health.
Commonly used treats are freeze dried crickets or meal worms, honey sticks, dried fruit(no added sugar), yogurt baking chips, dried fish stick snacks.
Insects like crickets, meal worms, super worms, horn worms etc can also be fed live and your gliders will probably love you for it, but be prepared for escap*e bugs. Offering live insects will often bring forth a totally new part of your gliders personality as they hunt, stalk, and attack their prey. That being said, having been domesticated some of them are totally weirded out by their snack moving!
** Treats are just that, treats. Meant to be offered occasionally, in small amounts. Just think of the size of these items in your gliders hand in ratio to a junk food of similar size in your own. A yogurt drop to your glider is like a big cookie or donut to you, fine here and there but you definitely should not be eating several of them a day.
You should also have multiple water sources in your cage incase one fails or becomes soiled, and you should check them once or twice a day. Rodent water bottle style is fine, but the ball can get stuck, and stay away from the ones with a spring loaded ball as they are often too hard for gliders to drink from or they can potentially pinch your gliders tongue.
The prefered way to offer water is with with a water silo, typically marketed for birds, but as a partially open water source they can be soiled so try to place them under a hammock or shelf to keep droppings out.
**leaving an air pocket in both of these water sources is INCREDIBLY important to ensure that the water is able to flow out. If you overfill them it will create a bit of a suction/tension that holds the water in, so despite having a full water bottle your glider will not be able to drink it**
CLEANING AND ODOR:
Sugar gliders are very smell oriented and have a sensitive respiratory system. Keep anything with a strong scent away from them. Air fresheners, scented candles and most essential oils should not be used around them. Some essential oils like eucalytus can be used in a diffuser if kept far enough away from them in area with decent circulation.
Sugar gliders mark things in their cage to make it smell like home. If you clean their cages too often are and remove too much of their scent at a time they will likely over-mark and make it smell stronger than it did before you cleaned. It is recommended to rotate which items you clean in the cage, wash the cage set 1 week, and toys the next or whatever works for you, just try to leave as much of their scent in there as you can. The bars of the cage itself shouldn't need to be done that often, probably once a month at the most often, maybe only only a few times at year. Trays/shelves/drop pans where urine and f***s collect can be done daily or every other day or so. Kitchens, food dishes, water bottles/silos should be cleaned daily to prevent mold, scum and fruit flies.
Simple vinegar and water or blue dawn dish soap and water are all you need for cleaning cages. Do not use any sort of chemicals.
When washing cage sets, using your regular detergent is fine, put the items in mesh garment bags to help protect them or keep small items like blankets and pom poms together. Air dry, or put them in the dryer on a low setting with NO dryer sheet.
They do have an odor-like any animal, but if you clean their cage fairly regularly it will not be an offensive odor. Intact males especially have a stronger, slightly musky odor, but nowhere near as bad hamsters, rats, ferrets etc. But if odor might be a problem for you, then get females or neutered males.
