SUGAR GLIDER CARE

Hey guys, it's Catalea! In this video, I'm going to tell you guys all about sugar gliders. How to take care of them, what to feed them, cage requirements, spacing, breeding, how to bond with them, all that good stuff. Keep watching and I'll try to fit as much information into one short video as I can. My experience with sugar gliders, I've personally had this trio of sugar gliders for two years going on three years. But in middle school and high school, I also had a sugar glider, which you're supposed to have too, but I'll get more into that later. So I've had sugar gliders for quite some time, and before I got my first one, I wanted them for a long time. So I put years of research into them before getting them. But I always recommend before any pet, going and doing your own research to make sure it is the pet that you want and that you can handle. And getting information from all different sources, combining it into what you think would be the best method of care for your animal. So sugar gliders are wonderfully exotic pets, but because of the hype of them lately, they are becoming more common in the pet trade. And male breeders have started selling them at the mall and at my local fair. Because of this, a lot of people have been buying them and then getting tired of taking care of them because they realize that the care is much more difficult than they were told. So the first and most important thing you should know about sugar gliders is that they are colony animals, so they need to be kept in pairs. If they're not kept in pairs, they will become depressed and possibly self-mutilate or over groom themselves from depression and loneliness. And even if you had just one and you spent 10 hours a day with the sugar glider, it would never compare to the companionship they would have with another animal of their own species. So a lot of people will get sugar gliders singly and they will be told that it's okay to have just one, and they will realize later on that that is not okay. A lot of the time, pet stores, male breeders, and the like will try to sell them singly. They tell people that it is okay to have just one sugar glider, which is the most common mistake that people make when getting these little guys. They should be kept in same-sex pairs with the males being neutered, two females, or a female and a neutered male, or two neutered males. An unneutered male will breed constantly with females. I will get more into this in a second, but lineage is also a very important factor when breeding sugar gliders. It's basically the family tree, and it goes all the way back to the first gliders in the U.S. Unneutered males will fight. Some will fight to the death for territory and females in the area. So you want to get your males neutered, and a lot of vet clinics will do this. It's becoming much more available to get your sugar glider neutered. Breeding. But like I was saying about breeding, sugar gliders will breed all year round in captivity. In the wild, they have a certain season that they will breed, which is in the warm months. But year round, they are kept where it is a decent temperature all the time, so they will breed year round and pop out babies. Every month, females go through a heat cycle in which they can get pregnant, and even if they already have a joey in their pouch that's growing and feeding, they can get pregnant again, so they will be continuously pregnant if kept with a male that is not neutered. And without lineage, you have no way of knowing if they are even a little bit related. And if they do have a slight chance of being related, the babies can have neurological problems or certain physical deformities that can very much inhibit their growth. Thepetglider.com is the database that has all of the lineage listed for sugar gliders. And if you go on there, if you have lineage with your sugar glider, you can add them into the system or look at lineage from all different gliders around the world. And if you also are planning on breeding, you can check your gliders and see if they have any relation anywhere down the line. And even just like a 5% chance of them being related is enough to cause fatal problems in the joeys. Sugar gliders have a pretty small gene pool in the United States. There's only, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but around 20 gliders were first brought, and then another couple hundred were brought into the U.S. So it's a very small gene pool to be working with if you plan on breeding safely. Colors. But there are a lot of different colors of sugar gliders. I will go ahead and show you my sugar gliders. My sugar gliders have lineage, and I took it upon myself to try breeding for a year or so. And this is one of the little male joeys that just came out of pouch a week or so ago. He is a mosaic sugar glider, and mosaics have the standard gray color with white spots or patches, like such as on the neck there. His tail is also white. His name is Frodo, and he has a home. One like Frodo is for sale for around $400, depending on the color morph, of course, and the lineage. She's buying him as a pet only, so before he goes home with his new owner, I will get him neutered free of charge and send him home with his new family when he's weaned in a couple more weeks. All right, and here's Daddy. His name is Mister. Males will have a bald spot on top of their head and on their chest, and those are scent glands that they use to mark everywhere. He is a very light-colored mosaic, and he's got some rings on his tail. But he is the daddy to that little boy, and he's gorgeous. That's Mister. And this is Maribel. She is a black beauty sugar glider, which is just a darker version of the standard gray. She has much darker lines on her face, and that's what makes her a black beauty. But yes, this is Maribel. Come on, Maribel. And this glider is Lavanna. She is a leucistic sugar glider, meaning all white with dark black eyes. The baby boy you saw is actually her joey, her son. So she will be nursing him for a few more weeks, and then he will be ready to go to his home. Yeah, those are my gliders. Caging. Sugar gliders require a very large cage. This is a Double Critter Nation. It's a flight cage. It's got two sections to it, and you can add on and take away as many sections as you want. But they need very large cages so they can jump from side to side and glide and play all the time. They really need a lot of space, so little hamster cages that they normally sell them in at the fair and whatnot, those are not big enough for let alone one sugar glider. They need a wide variety of toys, most of which are specially made for sugar gliders, as a lot of the store-bought toys made for hamsters or rabbits or birds are not safe for them. The only soft material that has been tested to be perfectly safe for gliders is fleece. So if you want to make them some toys or something, you'll want to make it out of fleece. Rope is not safe for them, as it can snag their nails. If their foot gets stuck in something and they can't get it out, they will chew off their toe or their foot to free them. But yes, plastic mostly. If you put wood things in their cage, they will pee on it and it will soak up the urine and just continuously smell, no matter how good you clean it. You can give them cork rounds, they'll chew on them and spit them out and play with them. Plastic links and things like that. And wheels, sugar gliders only have a few select wheels that are safe for them. I have not found a single store-bought wheel that is considered safe for sugar gliders. A few of the safe glider wheels are the raptor wheel, the stealth wheel, and there's another one that I can't think of, but I'll put a link to safe wheels in the description. Most of them are probably $40 and up, but they're big, so they will last and can fit two or three sugar gliders running on them all at the same time. And my gliders love to run on it at the same time and jump over each other. It's adorable. But yeah, that is caging. I didn't say this, but it should be obvious. They need water, access to water 24-7. I like to use a fountain-type thing. It's made for birds, but it's easier to clean and doesn't leak. So that's what I like to use for my sugar gliders. The next most important thing for sugar gliders is obviously their diet. This is also where a lot of other keepers go wrong. They have to have a staple diet. There is a long list of staple diets online that I will link at sugarglider.info. All of these diets are going to be homemade. You can't just feed them pellets because they are sap suckers. They will take the food and roll it around and spit it out. They absorb the liquid. So if you feed them pellets, they aren't really getting any nutrients. Also, pellets are mainly just filler and will make your gliders obese and give them stained brown and cracked fur if they are fed that diet too long. But I feed them OHPW, which stands for Original High-Protein Wombaru Diet. It consists of eggs, honey, the high-protein wombaru powder, which you order from Australia, bee pollen, and eggs. I don't know if I said that right. But there are a lot of other diets to choose from. All of them are going to be homemade, and most of them you can freeze into little ice cubes and just pop them out and feed into them every night. And then along with a staple diet, they also need a mixture of fruits and vegetables. The fruits and vegetables should make up most of their diet, while the staple diet should make up about 40-35% of their diet. For treats, they can be fed yogurt drops, mealworms, dried fruit, crickets, anything like that. However, if you feed them a lot of insects, it will probably cause them to be a little more smelly. But mine go crazy for the bugs, so I give them to them anyways. So bonding with a sugar glider can take anywhere from a week to a year. It depends on the glider and what the glider has gone through. They do bond very closely to their owners. The first thing they will bond through is scent. So if you're trying to bond with your new sugar gliders, sleep with a piece of fleece, and then the next day, put it in their cage. And then eventually, after you give them a couple days to settle in, you can start carrying them around in a bonding pouch. This is not the best example of one, but this is the little satchel I like to use to carry mine around in. It has a mesh area on top to ensure that they can breathe, and then it has a zipper, and the inside is lined with fleece. It's best to try to avoid getting ones that have open seams, that could snag nails or something like that. But bonding pouches are the number one way to bond with your sugar glider. Just carry them around with you throughout the day if you're not doing anything that's too loud or unsafe, and it'll get them used to being carried around on your person, and they'll get used to your smell, your voice, and all of that. Kind of like when you're pregnant, except you're carrying them around and they're not inside you. But like I said, it can take time, so they are not the best pet for everyone. Some of them will never even fully bond with you. Some of them will always bite. Maribel bites me and grabs at me every time I try to get her out. Grabbing sounds like this. It's not pleasant. Some will be the sweetest you've ever had. Some will be very skittish. They will pee on you basically every time you get them out. You can't potty train them other than knowing their cues of when they need to use the bathroom is helpful. So know right when you take them out they're going to pee, so set them on a towel or something. They are nocturnal, and they do bark. It's very adorable, but not when you're trying to sleep, and it's 2 a.m. and they're trying to sing you the song of their people. When I had them in my room for a year when I lived at home, I slept with earplugs because I could not get to sleep with them running on their wheel, barking, and jumping all over the place all night. So if you plan on having them in your room or something like that, I would think twice. They are also scent-based animals, so they will smell. Feeding them a proper staple diet will help with that, but they are scent-based animals, so they are going to have a smell. It's kind of like a musky... I don't know how to explain it. It's just like a musky smell. They have their own unique scent, but it's not necessarily bad, but if you let the pee and poop pile up, then it will start to smell pretty bad. They do need their nails clipped. I have a stealth wheel that is lined with sandpaper, so it files down their nails for me, but I just replace it every so often to keep it fresh. They can live for up to 15 years, similar to a dog or a cat, so if you're about to go to college or something, I would plan on that ahead of time because they will live for a long time and they are a long commitment. And they do get rehomed a lot because people get tired of taking care of them, so think about that before you make the decision to get some because they do bond very closely with their owners if they are given a lot of attention, and it's very hard, just as hard for them as it is for you, to get rid of them. So think about that before buying some. But if you do decide that a pair of sugar gliders is what you've been looking for, I would go through a reputable breeder. Make sure they have lineage on all of their sugar gliders. Make sure they allow you to see what their facility looks like. You don't want to go through a backyard breeder. You don't want to go through a mill breeder, which is what a lot of the people at the mall that sell them and at the fair that sell them are. Mill breeders, which is breeding them en masse. Small cages of a lot of gliders, bad diets, the whole nine yards. But I think I covered mostly everything. If you have any other questions or if I forgot anything, just ask me in the comments, and I will try to get back to you as quickly as I can. So yeah, thank you guys for watching. If you're going to start looking for sugar gliders, like I said, make sure you get a pair. Make sure you have them on a good staple diet, and I will list the staple diets in the description. Make sure you get them a really nice big cage, safe wheel, safe toys. Yeah, and for the most part, I guess that is it. Also, if you decide you'd rather be even better than getting from a breeder, get some rescues. I rescue sugar gliders as well as breed them. Small time, I only have a trio of breeding gliders. But I also have some rescues, and I get them in a lot. So if you are in the Texas area, I currently have two chubby female gliders that are looking for a home. And they've just gone through quarantine and been tested for parasites and all that, and put on a good diet, so their fur is clearing up and they're losing weight, because they're like really fat. Yeah, if you guys are interested in some rescues, you can contact moi, or you can like Sugar Glider Guardians on Facebook. They always have a lot of gliders that are in need of homes. And yeah, I think that's it. Say bye, mister. Okay, bye guys.