Monthly Archives: July 2009

Bagel and Donut

Today I am going to talk about 2 joeys, Bagel and Donut. Yes, I know what you guys are wondering, why am I naming joeys after food? Well, I can’t help it if they look all cute and tasty like edible pastries and breads. It’s the case with Churro.

Anyway, let me introduce 2 boys, Bagel and Donut.

Donut and Bagel are first joeys of Crumpet and Keiko. Yes, again with the food name. Crumpet is their dad, a big size glider while Keiko is a lovely sized female that adores her joeys to bits and is absolutely protective over them. Both OOP on 10 July 2009. Bagel has the thicker line while Donut has the thinner one. Bagel is 27g while Donut is 24g. Good size and lovely little boys.

Now my post here is not really to brag about these 2 joeys but more towards showing people how joeys at certain petshops or commercial breeders would look like. These 2 joeys are only 17 days OOP and are still on their mother’s milk. They need both their father and mother’s care and body heat to stay healthy and alive. Commercial breeders are snatching them away at around this age to gain a quick buck.

Well, I used to be naive and impulsive 3 years ago when I wanted to get a few joeys. My friend was telling me that he knows a breeder in Penang that is offering joeys for a cheap price. 3 years ago I was naive, I didn’t thought that there would be underage joeys for sale and believing my friend, he convinced me that the breeder was trustworthy and the joeys would be healthy. The shock came when my friend handed me 3 joeys that were smaller than Donut and Bagel! Utterly disgusted, shocke, sad and mad at the same time, I wanted an explanation. But the breeder or should I say commercial supplier didn’t want to answer me. He was only into getting quick money from gullible people like me back then. My friend felt guilty for his mistake as he didn’t know how a healthy joey should look like so I couldn’t blame him. I had to blame myself. So what happened? All 3 died due to there were no supplements or milk suitable for terribly underage joeys 3 years ago. Worst, those 3 were still unable to see. That was my most expensive but the best lesson ever learnt. See, I am also human and I learn from mistakes. 3 years ago I was silly and didn’t thought that I would be cheated.

Anyway, stop buying cheap joeys. Stop getting underage ones. Joeys that are about Bagel and Donut’s age should be nursed and loved by their parents. Stop supporting commercial breeders. Get from proper homebreeders that shower their gliders with good food, proper care and best of all, love.

Dubia roaches (Blaptica dubia)

I don’t have many of these roaches but then I find them the best to feed gliders and the best to breed. Why? I actually am scared of our local cockroach, phobia… but when it comes to dubias, I find them interesting and not so scary. The females have no wings, the males have wings…. but they rarely fly. Now normal cockroaches smell really bad, but with dubias, they smell earthy…. so that is why I would say they are easier to breed. They don’t smell, they don’t climb vertically, they do not fly and they are not noisy. Crickets are stinky, noisy and can escape by jumping or climbing. The adults are blackish with brown markings. The growing nymphs are brownish with spots. They appear white right after molting.

My gliders love this crunchy meaty roaches, but I have to limit to only males getting eaten coz they do not breed very fast. And I only give as a special treat for now. I hope I can get my hands on more soon. Anyway, dubias also give birth. At one time, they can give birth from 20 to 30 little nymps.

You can read more about dubias from these links:

http://www.nyworms.com/dubiacare.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaptica_dubia

Here are some pictures of my gliders having a dubia feast.

Churro

I do not have any pictures of Churro boy when he was a tiny joey, but he OOP on 28 May 2009. Naimah has already taken Marley, who got renamed as Mukuro. Churro will be called Chrome. I already miss Mukuro a lot but hearing from Naimah how Mukoro has bonded with her and how he jumps back to her just brings joy to me and reminds of the reasons why I decided to breed gliders.

Anyway, Churro is already 64g. Eating on his own very well and because his parents are big gliders, he will go over 110g once he reaches adulthood. Here are some pictures for his new owner, Naimah.

My overweight glider

Here is an article that I may need to touch since one of my own glider is having this problem.

Now Oshine was not alwasy overweight. She came to me as a slim female but after 5 months living with me, she put on quite an amount of weight. From a 90g she is now 119g. Now some may say 119g is not overweight, it is a good weight for a glider but when I see her buldge and double chin, it just looks so wrong. I showed her to my friend Eka and she lauged, saying that it was weird to see a glider without a neck. She even commented it looked like a tortoise! Now I am not offended because friends that care would voice such opinions, not to make fun but more like showing their concern in a friendly way.

I have stopped giving mealworms to Oshine when she started putting on the extra weight. But then it doesn’t help much. She is still active but I am just concern about her heart and liver. Chiwek doesn’t put on much weight, so I guess it is not really the diet but more like herbody’s metabolism. I was browsing through the Web and came across an article by SunCoast gliders,

“Now let’s jump back to our case study from last month.  In this cage, Janine is severely overweight at 185 grams.  Buddy is slightly overweight at nearly 200 grams.  Naomi is the perfect picture of health at 120 grams and Arnold is a bit on the scrawny side at 105 grams.  A common question we get asked here at SunCoast is how much should a glider weigh.  Well, unfortunately there is no clear-cut answer to this.  You see, just as people weight ranges are best targeted based upon height and frame structure, sugar glider weight ranges should also be determined based upon build.

You might notice that I said Buddy is only slightly overweight yet he weighs more than Janine by 15 grams.  He is a large glider with a significantly larger bone structure than any of the others he lives with. My best advice to you in determining a suitable weight for your glider is to find a veterinarian familiar with sugar gliders.  The sugar glider Buddy is a solid glider.  Janine, on the other hand, has a softer feel to her body mass.  The best way I can describe this to you in ordinary terms is that she feels as if she has no muscle tone.  This is a sign of obesity.  Additionally she has obvious rolls of fat under her chin.  She looks fat and a healthy sugar glider should not look fat.”

So let us take a look at some of Oshine’s pictures…

The layers of fat and the double chin….. She even has a line down her chest that makes her look like she got huge breast! A line is normal in most gliders but for Oshine, it was like 2 huge lumps instead of tiny humps.

Where is her neck?

Look at the difference between Chiwek and Oshine. They used to be almost the same size but now Oshine is almost double in size of Chiwek. Poor him, he now has to sleep with a plump potato hahahah.

What do I feed them? Fruits and GliderSLURP of course. All my gliders are on the same diet, I have 2 underweight gliders. One is Ceeko, which I am trying to push her weight up and another is my Keera, which is only 80g. I got big gliders like ChubsBoi that is around 122g and Kinta is around 130g….. Hopefully I can bring Oshine’s weight down. She is not obese yet because she can still move around, jump and run on her wheel. She jus doesn’t look good with all that extra spare layers buldging out.

Chiwek and Oshine

I adopted a pair of gliders from my friend Elaine. She got Chiwek from me in the year 2006. Chiwek was a crabby boy that was helping a friend to sell. Back then, I was not into breeding sugar gliders yet so I just helped people get sugar gliders from a few friends of mine that breed gliders. Here is a picture of Chiwek when he was a 2 month OOP joey:

Chiwek was paired up with Oshine, a female glider that is about the same age as he is. Anyway, Elaine has been unable to give proper care due to her work as she needs to travel around the country and out of the country a lot. So she decided to leave me Chiwek and Oshine, which they will have their last forever home with me.

Chiwek is a handsome glider. He is quite brown when I compare to my other males. He has warmed up to me and I am able to handle both him and Oshine with ease but then it is very difficult to trim their claws, so I do have lots of scratches from them. He adores dubia roaches and crickets.

Then comes Oshine. She is a shy girl and transformed a lot since her first day at Suggies At Home. She was slim when she first came, around 90g as she is a small frame glider. She and Chiwek were roughly the same size but Chiwek’s weight has never change much. He was 97g and now he is 100g. I do not have a picture of Oshine before her weight problem. Yes….. her weight problem. I will explain more about her weight problem in my next article. Here are just some pictures to introduce her.

And here is the happy couple sharing a dubia.

An entry to reply

It’s been a busy week for me from the start of the Pet World Malaysia Pet Expo till today. Back to college, I’m trying to get back into the rhythm of studying.

Anyway, the Pet World exhibition was really good. We manage to educate many people, both local and foreign. Swell job, even to Emino, who did a wonderful thing by bringing his gliders and Explorium along. Once I get some pictures, I will update on an entry about the event.

Here is a question from a fellow reader:

Heys, I’m extremely interested in these little marsupials.. I’ve been following your blog for quite some time now and have read your whole blog starting from the first post. xD I still hope to learn more, like why did your Keera try to rub the male’s scent on her? Was she trying to be Gip Gip’s? And Sugar Gliders are defined as social animals, yet they don’t mate for life? Or do they?

Sorry about the questions, I am aware that they have nothing to do with keeping them, but I think that the more we understand them, the more we can cater to their needs. And I find them very fasinating and hope to be a Suger Glider owner one day…

Thank you for the comment. I don’t mind answering questions, be it on the phone, through emails or smses but it is best through email as I can put down more detail.

Keera is normally not friendly to other gliders but somehow she got this liking for Gip Gip…. and Gip Gip doesn’t like other gliders, so it was funny to see how Keera wanted to be Gip Gip’s girl. Keera already has a mate, Kuno so I too found it odd. Anyway, we can’t understand what goes on in a glider’s mind. Gliders are social creatures. In the wild, they have like a dominant male and a dominant female in a group, with a few females and young males in it. Only the dominant male mates.  The social group can be anywhere from 5 to 14 gliders. They do not mate for life so if we have a pair and one of the glider dies, it is best to introduce another glider to them as soon as possible to avoid depression.

At SuggiesAtHome, I let them be paired for life if possible. It is not right to have 3 females to 1 male in a cage. Firstly, they would be some issues like joey snatching and cannibalism. Female gliders can be jealous of one another when joeys and breeding is involved. Another reason would be the space. In the wild gliders have huge open areas of trees and greenery, so if there is a squabble or fight, they can easily escape from one another. In captivity, we shouldn’t overcrowd gliders in small cages, unless you can build a huge bird aviary then that would be another thing. If we are breeding them, I find 1 male to 1 female is the best. The most important thing about gliders is that when they breed and have joeys, the male plays an important part. He babysits and cleans the joeys, keeps them safe like how a human dad would. That is another reason why we should never separate the male once the female has joeys.

Sugar gliders are indeed facinating. I wish I have a net book with me so that it would be easier for me to update my blog while at college or away. Anyway, stay tuned for new entries.

I can’t wait for this weekend!

I’m so excited…. really looking forward towards this coming weekend. Why? It’s the Pet World Malaysia pet exhibition, one of the events I highlighted in my event category. I just can’t wait for it.

I will be helping my friend with her booth, so at the same time I will be promoting my blog and GliderSLURP! If any of you readers happen to be in KL, do drop by MidValley to visit me. You are welcome to play with my 4 gliders and view what is on display as well grab the opportunity to get some discounted glider accessories. Oh yah, GliderSLURP will also hae a very special discount. And for early birds, we got a special special Goodie Bag up for grabs once you purchase something from us. Worth it!

I will be selling some high quality stainless steel feeding cups with hangers. Its in limited quantity so do come and get them early.

Which gliders will I be bringing? Well, you guys will get a chance to see Kiah, Keera, Kuno… the joeys, Marley and Rambo….

For more info, please look at the Pet World Malaysia Exhibition page.