Sugar Glider Food - Dry Staple Food
Sugar glider food should contain the proper amount of
protein, vitamins and minerals to keep your sugar glider
healthy. The items listed on this page should be fed only
in addition to a proper diet.
Important things to remember for your sugar glider
diet…
- Dry food should only be fed as a supplement – not as
the main course. Sugar gliders are
exotic animals and do require an exotic diet.
There are no pre-packaged foods that can provide for ALL
of the nutritional needs of sugar gliders. You
must feed your gliders a proper diet to allow them a long and
healthy life.
- You may want to keep a good dry staple food in the
cage at all times. This allows the gliders to snack
during the day and gives them an alternative if they are
being picky about their other sugar glider food one
night.
- Some main
diets do not require the use of a dry staple food and
there are varying opinions as to whether they should ever
be used or not. If you are unsure, please consult the
creator of the diet you are using and/or your
veterinarian.
- If you see corn meal in the top 3 ingredients, a good
rule of thumb is DO NOT use it. Corn is very high in
phosphorous.
- Make sure there is a good calcium:phosphorous ratio
(close to 2:1). DO NOT feed anything with more
phosphorous than calcium.
- Try to choose a dry food that will not throw off the
balance of vitamins and nutrients in your primary diet.
- If feeding a hard food, many breeders suggest soaking
it in some apple juice to help soften it a little.
Since gliders are sap-suckers and they roll food around in
their tongues, these hard foods could hurt and even
cut their mouths. Some believe that hard/dry foods
can lead to a condition known as Lumpy Jaw Syndrome, where
bacteria enters the system from wounds in the mouth.
Please be aware of this when determining if or how to feed
dry food to your glider(s). However, there is no
solid evidence that we are aware of stating that feeding a
hard pellet food can cause Lumpy Jaw. The higher
likelihood is that if a glider gets an abscess or cut, a
dry pellet food could agitate it more than a soft
food. Also, soaking the food in apple juice makes the
food spoil more quickly.
- DO NOT feed the Glide-R-Chow™ or Glider Grub that comes
from Perfect Pocket Pets or Custom Cageworks. The
ingredients are awful.
- DO NOT feed cat food to your gliders. Gliders
have very special dietary needs and cat food is bad
for them.
List of sugar glider dry staple foods:
With the help of some of our friends on Glider Central, we
have put together some information about the
dry sugar glider foods available on the market.
Although a lot is still unknown about the dietary needs of
sugar gliders, this information can be used to compare
the quality of ingredients and nutritional analysis
of the products. These files were last updated in October
2009.
- Dry Sugar
Glider Food Quick View - This pdf list is a quick view
of each food's nutritional analysis, calcium:phosphorous
ratio (where available), and first five
ingredients. One suggestion in looking for a
good food option is a good main protein source as the
first ingredient in the product (preferably not a byproduct
or blood meal).
-
Dry Sugar Glider Food Full List by Vendor - This pdf is
a more complete list, sorted by vendor, with all
ingredients listed out (rather than
the first five) and nutritional
analysis. This list could be helpful if you are
wanting to do a deeper comparison of foods.
- Dry
Sugar Glider Food Comparison Chart - This chart gives
you an easy way to compare protein, fat, and fiber content
of the different sugar glider dry foods.
Again, we do not recommend feeding a dry food as the
main diet for
your sugar glider, however we do believe that if you are
supplementing the main diet with a dry
food, it is a good idea to do some research and select the
one you believe will work best for your gliders.
Review of some suggie-safe dry staple foods:
- Happy Glider from Pet Pro - While this
diet does have toasted corn flour toward the top of the
ingredients list, we believe the Chicken Protein and
Breeder formulas to be good options for a staple
food. Out of the flavor options, those two seem to be
the best options because of the higher protein content and
quality of ingredients. We like that the top
ingredient is chicken meal and not some type of byproduct
or soy product. Happy Glider is well-loved by our gliders
as well and many other breeders use it with great
success.
We do have Happy Glider Chicken and Happy
Glider Breeder Formula available for you in our
store. For other flavors or products, please
call Pet Pro directly at 877-977-8310. Tell them
Misty Dorman at Sweet Sugar Gliders sent you and you
will receive 10% off of their retail prices.
- Premium Sugar Glider Diet from Exotic
Nutrition - We have used
this for our gliders and they really like it.
The pellets are small and easy for the gliders to
hold. They are not super hard, so they do not hurt
the gliders' mouths. It seems to just crumble apart
when they nibble on it. The Ca:Ph ratio is great, it
has 40.18% protein, VERY low fat, and the ingredients
are really good for them. Corn meal is way down at
#12 on the list. I believe if you got in a pinch with
running out of your main course diet, you
could feed this for a night or two and be ok. There
are other pellet foods made by Exotic Nutrition,
but we felt the Premium Sugar Glider Diet was the best
choice. The Glider Complete diet looks healthy too,
but we thought our gliders would just pick out their
favorite pieces and not eat the pellets. Please note that
this pellet food is advertised as a complete diet for sugar
gliders, but we believe most knowledgeable breeders
would agree that it should only be used as a supplement (or
as a meal if you are in a bind and for some reason unable
to feed a proper diet one night). The fat
content is actually too low for sugar gliders. I
have also read that this sugar glider food may not
be the best in a humid climate, but we have not
experienced any problems where we live.
Another thing to note is that the main protein source in
this diet is blood meal. After doing a small
amount of research on blood meal, we were not too fond
of it being a top ingredient.
You can find the Premium Sugar Glider Diet
in our store.
- Zookeeper’s
Secret from Suncoast / Insectivore Fare from
Exotic Nutrition - I believe these are both
very similar, if not the same diet. If this is
incorrect, please let us know. They are
both soft pellet foods. We used Zookeeper’s when
we first got our sugar gliders (when we were feeding
them Judie's BML)
and they would not eat the Zookeeper's. We tried
it for several months. We tried it again a year
later and they ate it fine. I am sure many people
are successful with this, but it did not work for us
when we first tried it. Also, it gets hard after
being left out for a while, so if you are selecting a
staple food to leave in the cage during the day in case
they wake up for a snack, consider that this one will
get hard. That being said, Zookeeper's is marketed
primarily to zoos and formulated specifically for sugar
gliders. This is the diet recommended by Suncoast
and if you have chosen to feed the Suncoast diet, this may be a
good choice for you.
You can find Zookeeper's Secret at
http://www.sugar-gliders.com/zookeepers-secret.htm and
you can find Insectivore Fare at
http://www.exoticnutrition.com/Insectivore-Fare-Analysis.htm
- Monkey
biscuits – Many breeders are using
these as a dry staple food because they keep for a long
time and the gliders like them. They are quite a bit
larger than a regular pellet and are very hard. They
may be good for keeping the glider’s teeth clean. I
tend to think that since gliders are sap-suckers and they
roll food around in their tongues, these hard biscuits
could hurt and even cut their mouths. I have also
read that hard foods can lead to a condition known as Lumpy
Jaw Syndrome, where bacteria enters the system from wounds
in the mouth. After doing some other research on
Lumpy Jaw, I do not believe there is any evidence to
support that Lumpy Jaw is caused by hard food.
However, I do believe it's possible for hard food to cut
their mouths. For that reason, and also because there
are better choices of dry food as far as
ingredients go, I do not use monkey
biscuits. I think the Happy Glider, Premium Sugar
Glider Diet, or Zookeeper's Secret is a better option
and are just as easy to feed. However, if you do want
to feed monkey biscuits, one suggestion would be to soak
them in some apple juice, to soften them up for your
suggies. Leaving them in the cage too
long soaked in apple juice can promote bacteria
growth, so be careful about that if you try it.
You can find Monkey biscuits at
http://www.sugar-glider-store.com/monkey-biscuits.html
As this website is new, we will be adding more to this list,
but these are the most popular dry foods. To request
a food be added to this list, please email us. As
Sweet-Sugar-Gliders does not manufacture any sugar
glider food, we are impartial and strive to give you our
unbiased opinion based on research and personal
experience.
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