From Lisa:

Hi Hun,

I have 2 gliders – one male and one female. They get along well on any other day EXCEPT when it comes to mating season. She doesn’t seem to like to mate. Whenever he comes close and smell / lick the you-know-where, she will start to crab (a very loud one to the point when I couldn’t sleep at all) and push him away. Is that a norm?

Hi Lisa

What your girl is trying to show your boy is that she doesn’t want to breed. Some females would tell off a male if it doesn’t want to breed. She is telling him she isn’t ready. Gliders will mate if they both accept one another during breeding periods, so if your girl is not ready, she won’t let him breed with her. Crabbing, chasing, a little squabbling is normal. So no worries. Once she feels that she is ready, she would let him mate with her. Just a matter of time.

From Pet Sugar Glider

what is the normal cost per day to board 2 sugar gliders?

Well, it depends. My price for boarding is very flexible coz I do it from home, it is normally Rm7 per day. The longer the stay, the cheaper it would be.

OK, time to reply to a few comments.

From niniek

hi
rambo does look so calm in the pics.
I’m just wondering, how make my suggie get use to my dog barking and be as calm as Rambo?, and how to make my dogs stop being so curious over her. because one of my dog is very busy body and always comes close to me when I’m bonding with my suggie. I’m quite scared that my dog would bite her as my dog bites when she’s excited.

My joeys and gliders are quite calm around the presense of dogs, but not all are calm when my dogs bark alot. Some would run up and down, well, I would say the newbies to my home are a bit scared of barking dogs but my resident gliders are pretty calm. It just takes time.

Dogs and cats are natural domestic predators to such a small animal like a glider. It really isn’t wise to leave a glider freely without a cage with a dog or cat. You can make your dog get used to gliders by letting your dog smell a used pouch or toy with your glider’s smell. If they try to bite the pouch or toy, scold your dog or let your dog know it is wrong. My 2 cavaliers are quite ok with gliders because I let them know what are gliders when they were puppies. So they very much leave my gliders alone. They do come up to sniff them but never lay a paw or tooth on them before.

If your dog is aggressive or bites, then the best advice is to not let your dog near your glider.

From Yogy:

hey…i bought a 2 months of age joey recently…she’s ok in the sense that she plays around well…but she seems to be very afraid of human presence…any suggestions to change that??i would really appreciate it…thanks!!

Your joey is stil new, and she has not learn to trust humans yet. It will take time. Just carry her around in your bonding pouch, do hand feeding and keep handling her often. You will see a difference in a week or 2. It may take you a month to fully bond with your joey if you practice taking her in a bonding pouch every where you go and hand feed every day. Some joeys take only a few days to trust their owners, some would take a month or 2. So be patient. Gentle handling and daily interaction would calm her down.

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 will reply to some questions that I have not been able to answer during my 3 months of industrial training. Hopefully the readers who posted this would be able to read it soon.

Great! Glad u brought up this topic. So I guess I got to prepare myself ahead for the ‘big day’ i.e the day my boy get neutered.
My question are:-
1. What should the owner prepare before the surgery? What to expect?
2. Do we just send our sg to the vet and leave it there?
3. How long do we have to wait for the surgery to be over?
4. How long do we have to wait for our sg to wake up after surgery?
5. Can the owner watch the thier glider in the surgery room in the process?
6. When or sg wake up, whose face will they see first, owner or vet?

Thanks for yr guidance

Good that you have decided to neuter your glider. Well, there are a few things the owner should prepare and take note of.

1. The owner should have the cage cleaned up and disinfected. Take out the wheel coz running may injure the surgery area. The night before the surgery, the glider should not eat anything or drink any water to avoid complications during surgery.

2. Yes, just drop your glider at the clinic in the morning and you can take him back in the late afternoon or evening.

3. It depends. The surgery is fast, it depends on how stable your glider is before it can go home. It’s somewhere around 2 hours but it could be longer if there were complications.

4. The glider would wake quite fast if it was sedated using the gas…. but if it was an injection, then it would take longer, some gliders would vomit, chew and cry from the sudden pain…. so gas is the best. Normally the vet would hand back the glider to you once it wakes up.

5. People are not allowed into the surgery room coz it is a sterile environment.

6. Well, when a glider wakes up, it would be the vet or their assistant that they see first, and then only you because they have to make sure your glider is ok and healthy before handing back to you. But if your glider takes longer to wake up, they would let you accompany it till it awakes from the sedation but that depends on the vet.

hi…can i give my sg eat oat?.. tq

Yes, a glider can take oats but only rolled oats. Not instant oats, not porridge oats…. just plain old rolled oats and never too much coz oats can cause bloating if too much is consumed. Give as treats…. never as a staple.

Hello, i have a 3 month joey. He loves having mealworms. i would like to know how often should Ryo get his mealworms and how many for each meal?

You can give mealworms everyday but never exceed 10 a day. I normally give a few a day as treats coz mealworms are high in phosphorus and fats. We want our joeys to bulk up with proper food, not fatty food. I would suggest 5 to 6 a day for your Ryo.

hye…my fren who bot a sg from u recommended me to deal with u…i’ve been reading alot on sg n hedgehog, n been considering on getting either one…..im not sure whether this info is relevant or not, but im staying in college…so would it be a suitable environment to place these sg? any info would be much appreciated…n if i have decided…..should i get 1 or a pair of joeys? my only concern is that…since these marsupials are nocturnal n social creature…..i would be gone for classes mostly during the day….would that b a major problem? thanx…sorry for asking too much…i just need to know so that i wouldnt neglect this cute animal

Hi Nurul

Well, first of all, send my regards to your friend. Thank you for visiting my blog too. Well, the answer is gonna be long so I though why not share it in a post.

Many students actually do own sugar gliders now. I have many friends who are still in college like me and we too only have time after classes. You have to make sure you can commit to the gliders coz when they are joeys, they require lots of attention, lots of bonding and handling time. You can shorten the bonding by always carrying a sleeping pouch with them all day, but that depends if you got classes that restricts noises or not.

About hostel, well, it also depends on the rules. Are you allowed to have pets in the hostel? Would anyone complain if they heard barking and crabbing from a glider? There are students who have been able to keep gliders in their hostels plainly because the rules are not strict and no one comes around to check their rooms. So be sure you can cope this.

Secondly, one of the things I would say glider owners should have in their homes would be a small fridge and a blender if possible. The fridge would keep the produce and food fresh for your glider and a blender comes in handy if you need to create some fruit blends for them.

About 1 or 2 joeys, it would be up to you. I normally start off with 1 joey first, then after a month or 2, I go on with the second joey because the time gap allows me to concentrate on bonding with the first joey. Gliders should be kept in a pair for life, so in the end you would definitely end up with 2 gliders. Anyway, it is up to you, 1 or 2 joeys but you must be able to give each joey individual attention. Bonding and handling is crucial at their young joey age as that is where they learn to trust you, to see you as their friend, care giver, security tree and their surrogate mom. If we do not give them enough bonding time, the gliders won’t be very tame, they will not trust us. To them, we are just food givers and a big annoying monster. I don’t really get much sleep or travel and have a good time with friends coz I got many gliders to handle, it’s just a big commitment for me. So you have to be ready to commit, to stay up late at night to handle them and to stay confident and not let a few crabs and bites or nips scare you. Remember, when we get a glider, we gotta be ready for a 10 to 15 year commitment.