GliderGossip - Wombaroo HPS part 2

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Wombaroo HPS part 2

Mar 20 2012

02:55:37 PM

valkyriemome Goofy Gorillatoes

USA 3479 Posts

From: Gordon Rich
Date: March 20, 2012

Hi Alden,

I’ve had a quick look at links to the glider forums. Its probably easiest if I just answer any specific questions rather than get involved in the forums. It is important to reiterate that Wombaroo HPS is not promoted as a complete diet, and that our dietary recommendations are simply guidelines based on our long term experience with captive Sugar Gliders. Wombaroo HPS is a very useful and versatile supplement that can be used to boost essential protein, fatty acids, vitamins & minerals in the diet of Sugar Gliders. How it is applied can vary greatly from user to user – if people are happy with their current feeding regime and their animals are healthy then we recommend they stick to what works for them.

Just one point, someone asked me about the Mazuri Insectivore Diet, which I said to you looks OK at first glance. At second glance I did notice that the iron levels are quite high in this product (350ppm compared to about 70ppm for Wombaroo Small Carnivore Food and 40ppm for Wombaroo HPS). Now this is not a huge problem unless the Mazuri Insectivore Diet is used as a large proportion of the diet which it probably isn’t (I wouldn’t have it at more than 20% of the diet anyway).

I have inserted my answers in blue italics to the questions raised below:

I’ve sent this email from a different address, but if you have any questions please forward them to our usual address: wombaroo@adelaide.on.net

Kind Regards,

Gordon.

From: Kyrie's Mom#8232;Sent: Saturday, 17 March 2012#8232;
Hello, Mr. Rich -

I've begun a discussion on two of the American sugar glider forums. If you have time in your day to take a look:
www.sugarglider.com/glidergossip/topic.asp?TOPIC_I...
www.glidercentral.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/to...

Some questions that I didn't think to ask have already been generated there. I know you are probably very busy and don't have much time to "forum lurk" - so I'll relay some of the questions to you here, in order to summarize. (Sorry if the colors are too confusing to read - I was trying to separate the questions from my comments.)

"I would be interested to know if the Paswell folks had any input into Exotic Nutrition's "Instant HPW", or if they were made aware that Exotic Nutrition is selling repackaged Wombaroo High Protein Supplement with the bee pollen added for making Peggy's recipe for her original HPW Diet."
Wombaroo has had no input on Exotic Nutrition’s Instant HPW. Neither are we aware of any repackaging of our products in the US – this is not really a concern for us, so long as it is not being called “Wombaroo”. Once our products have been repackaged we have no legal responsibility for the product.

"If you mix the powder with honey and or green juice, do you omit the water? Do you omit the arrowroot biscuit totally? Again, my gliders love the OHPW (Mr. Rich, here the person is referring to what we call "The Original HPW Diet" - this meaning the mix I detailed in my very first email to you, and the one "invented" by Ms. Brewer) and lick it clean so if I had the biscuit, they may not eat all of it." You can make it up to whatever consistency you require. The “green juice” is mostly water so will be quite fluid, whereas honey usually needs to be diluted with water to thin it out. The biscuit we use is simply a vehicle for adding the HPS – you can replace it with another palatable food source.

"What do you moisten the dry food with?" You can moisten dry food with a 25% (weight per volume) solution of HPS which is approximately 1 part HPS to 3 parts water

"Is Mr. Rich also saying that if your gliders are consuming the OHPW as directed, then the variety of fruits and veggies isn't as big a concern as some make it out to be? My gliders prefer veggies to fruit almost always. They rarely eat ANY fruit that we give them no matter what form we try (smoothies, chopped small, left whole, whatever)." We can’t give recommendations on the OHPW diet as we don’t have a full nutritional breakdown of this diet. As long as any fruits or vegetables are directly supplemented with Wombaroo HPS, then you can be satisfied that the diet is well-balanced.

"Is the implication that bee pollen isn't necessary to add to OHPW?" Once again we can’t comment on the OHPW diet. However the addition of bee pollen to a diet supplemented with Wombaroo HPS is uneccessary.

"So, am I reading it correctly that Mr. Rich recommends sprinkling DRY powder over the fruit and veggies? My concern with this is that my gliders are very very picky and tend to pick and choose what F/V they want to eat each night thus that would be a non measurable amount of powder consumed that way." If you supplement all fruit & veg with Wombaroo HPS then whatever they eat will be adequately supplemented.

"What about gliders that won't eat euc or any type flowers?" Not a real problem as these are largely behavioural enrichments for captive animals rather than dietary requirements. Most people tend to overfeed their gliders so they are not interested in foraging for “real food” anyway!

"So instead of the biscuit or cookie, we can just use honey or fruit juice and give them 2 ml of that?" Yes

"The 20g of fruits/veggies... how much would that be in tablespoons?" Roughly 2 heaped tablespoons, depending on the density of the fruit/veg in question and how heaped your spoon is. The best way is to weigh it out and you can see for yourself (20g is 0.7 oz) (Honestly, I tried to figure out your conversions using an online program, because I knew this question would be asked. Your directions in one part are 1 part HPS™ powder (25g) into 3 parts warm water (75ml). I'm not sure how to convert what appears to be a weight combined with what is a volume? Sorry - my brain can do the metric conversions usually, but I can't figure out how to get "grams" to "tablespoons"!) You can’t – ones a weight and the other is a volume – just convert the grams into ounces and the ml into fluid oz. This means about 0.88 oz of powder (25g) to 2.5 fluid oz (75ml) of water. It is always useful to initially weigh out a standard measure of powder (ie a tablespoon)to get an idea of how much powder you are using.

I'm very excited that this dialog has begun on the forums. We flounder around about sugar glider diets so much here in the States. We love our little gliders, and everyone wants what is healthy for them! But, not many can agree what that is.

Thank you!
Alden

Mar 20 2012

03:00:12 PM

valkyriemome Goofy Gorillatoes

USA 3479 Posts