I have had my sugar glider for about 2 weeks now. I took her to the vet today to have her checked out and the vet said she looked healthy and reccomended a few diets. I just had a few questions about this chicago zoological park diet.

1 tsp-sized piece of each, chopped: apple, carrot, sweet potato, banana.
1 tsp leaf lettuce
1 hard boiled egg yolk
1tbsp Zupreem (or other zoo-qality feline diet)
1 dozen mealworms.

first off, it calls for a tablespoon of Zupreem, but there are so many different kinds of Zupreem Im not sure which one to buy. The exotic feline? or the omnivore one?

Also, if I use this diet do I still need to continue mixing a calcium with vit. D supplement and a herptivite in with her meal worms?

First of all, Welcome to GG and Congrats on your new baby.

Go up under the Gliderpedia and look up Nutrition or Diet (or both) and you will see several recognized diets that many on here feed.

Your vet is offering diet advice out of a Veterinarian Manual in which information on how they feed at various zoos is given.

Many of these are outdated or have ingredients that many leypersons can't feed or have access to.

I'm not saying it's a bad diet, I personally have never heard of it, but you have easier and less expensive feeding options.

Check it out and then hop back on with any questions you may have, and again, Welcome!

Welcome to the site!! I'm not familiar with that diet at all. Seems like the calcium would be low though. I know you asked if you should add calcium, but without knowing the ratios of that diet itself it will be really hard to know if you are giving the too little..or too much.
If you go up under gliderpedia, you can read up on diets that are a little more recognized in the community. They are all well balanced too:)

If I'm not mistaken that is one of the diets in a new reference manual for vets that was published in November last year. It isn't outdated and it is nutritionally sound. What other diets did your vet suggest? There might be an easier one?

I think the bml diet sounds good. The only thing is that it calls for mixed fruit yogurt juice. And I dot believe we sell it in Canada. Is there an alternative to that? Something else I could use.

If you look up the diet there is a note in there about being able to sub it for a mixture of fruit juice and plain (safe) yogurt.

Here is the link to the original diet receipe:

http://www.angelfire.com/nb/sugargliders/bml/leadbeat.html

[quote]
"For those that can not find this, you may substitute 2 oz of plain yogurt and 2 oz of mixed fruit juice "
{/quote]

BML does restrict the variety of the fruit/veggies - you can still offer other items as treats, but the list on that link should be followed for the majority of it.

Oh thank you guys. :) This diet sounds fairly simple. Has anyone used this diet/ using this diet? Is it a balanced one?

I use it and have never had any major issues, my girls love it. I have heard a few people say that it's high in iron, but it is one of the tried and true diets that alot of people still use.

Okay thank you. Two last questions, I hope. It says to freeze in cubes of 2 tbsp. but it only says to feed them 1 tbsp of the mix. Then why freeze it into 2 tbsp cubes? And also, the list of fruits and veggies they give, just to clarify, you feed a mixture of all of them at night right? Sorry I sound dumb but I just want to make sure I'm giving her what she needs.

Gliders should be kept in at least pairs - a 2 TBS cube is perfect for two gliders.

If you have only 1 glider, you will need to measure the ice cube tray capacity and fill each section with only 1 TBS of the mix if you are using HPW Complete or Instant HPW. Other diets are more like Ice Cream texture and you can cut a cube in half if it is a 2 TBS cube.

I don't see a list of veggies/fruits that are okay to feed with the BML diet....

Here ya go:
With the BML you feed:
1 Tablespoon of fruits, (apples, grapes, watermelon, cantalope, melon, frozen pitted cherries and blueberries)
1 Tablespoon of veggies (corn, peas, carrots and green beans)

But do you feed all of those at once. Or just choose one fruit and one veggie each night and feed that?

I inboxed you a couple hrs ago....look for the blinking red envelope up top.

With the BML, you feed 1 TBS of the frozen mixed vegetables each night and 1 TBS of the fruits - either one fruit each night or a mixture of small amounts of several of the listed fruits. For one glider it is probably easiest to use 1 fruit each night since you need only a small amount.

the mixed vegetables and selected fruits are somewhat high in phosphorus but they are necessary to balance the calcium in the BML mixture

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by blackfl0wer</i>
<br />I think the bml diet sounds good. The only thing is that it calls for mixed fruit yogurt juice. And I dot believe we sell it in Canada. Is there an alternative to that? Something else I could use.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">with the BML you substitute 1/4 cup of plan yogurt with 1/4 mixed fruit juice. This is per Bourbon the diet creator. Specific instructions on how to make: www.angelfire.com/nb/sugargliders/bml/leadbeat.html This is her website.