Sweet-Sugar-Gliders.com - Your ultimate suggie resource guide

Sugar Glider Main Course

The sugar glider main course of the diet consists of a mixture of ingredients (that you make and freeze ahead of time), fruits, and vegetables. This is the main part of the diet and should be fed every night. It should be removed in the morning, so if the gliders wake up and want to snack during the day, they will not eat rotten food. Instead, if you want to, you can choose to give them access to a dry staple food for mid-day snacking.

Sugar Glider Approved Diets

Use the links below for help in selecting a sugar glider diet that is best for you and your gliders. It is important to remember that gliders may like something one night and not like it the next. To get a good feel for how your gliders are eating their diet, make sure to try it out for more than one night. Also, some glider owners recommend increasing the overall amount of food offered for lactating females.

HPW – High Protein Wombaroo – This is what we feed our gliders and they love it! Not only that, but it is the easiest to make and one batch lasts about 2 ½ months for two gliders. The up-front expense is a little high (ordering the Wombaroo powder and bee pollen) but it lasts several batches, so overall it is a really cheap diet to make. We are planning to stick with this diet and have even created the SSG Complete HPW Diet, which uses the HPW Diet and expands to show which fruits and vegetables work well with it.
Judie’s BML – This is Judie Haussman’s version of Bourbon’s Modified Leadbeater’s diet. She has modified it to make it taste less bitter. She and many other glider owners have had great success with this diet. We fed it to our gliders for a while before switching to HPW. Our gliders really liked it, but we felt the HPW would more closely mimic their sugar glider diet in the wild and was much easier to make (due to the fewer # of ingredients).
Original BML – Bourbon’s Modified Leadbeater’s – We have not personally tried this diet with our gliders, but it is widely approved. The difference from this and Judie's BML is the type of juice and the amount of the Herpivite vitamin supplement.
Pricsilla Price’s Diet (aka Sugar Glider Exotic Diet) – We have not personally used this diet, but many breeders are using it and Priscilla has been breeding gliders for years. She has successfully used this diet with over 1,000 gliders.
Suncoast Diet – We have not personally tried this diet, but Suncoast is having great success with it and is a large and reputable breeder.
Leadbeater's Formula - This diet was developed by the Taronga Zoo as part of an extensive feeding schedule for their sugar gliders. We have not personally tried this diet but it is our understanding that it was meant to only be fed as part of the diet. This diet may be the most difficult to replicate as a pet owner. This is why you see modified versions of Leadbeater's such as BML and Judie's BML.

Fruits and Veggies

Please click here for a list of glider-safe fruits and veggies.

Fresh fruits and veggies should be fed daily, according to the instructions in the main sugar glider diet that you have chosen. Frozen fruits and veggies are ok to use and can be thawed out in the microwave or fed to the gliders a few hours before they wake up. Do not use canned fruits or vegetables.

Our gliders do not eat their fruits and veggies as well if they are not cut up into small pieces, so we usually chop them up. Gliders are sap-suckers, so you may think they are not eating well, but if you take a closer look at their veggies, you’ll see that they are hollowed out and only the shell is left.

Also, being named "sugar" gliders does not mean that they need a diet of mostly fruit. Most diets will have you keep the fruits and veggies at the same amounts.