I have tried to feed my girls a wide variety of fruits and veggies, but every morning it seems like they aren't touching their food! I have tried mango, papaya, kiwi, bananas, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, collard greens, cherry tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, green beans and nothing. The only thing the actively eat a lot of are peas and corn (go figure!) and they will eat the apples we give during the day.

The HPW mix seems to be eaten but there is always some left over. They are very, very active and drink a lot of water so there is nothing inherently wrong with them. I usually give a little more than 2 tablespoons of fruits (usually two or three kinds) and 2 tablespoons of veggies (usually two or three more) then 1.5/2 tablespoons of HPW mix.

I'm wondering if there is any way that they are eating enough I just can't really tell from their plates? My boyfriend says that I am such an Italian woman because I want every to always eat more (and he is SUPER picky) but idk

What do you guys think?

I am interested I hearing what people say on this topic as well. Neither of my gliders seem to eat much. They like yogurt drops and mealies but leave most of their dinner. I feed HPW original and a vast array of fruits and veggies, but I end up throwing most of their meal out in the morning. I'm hoping as they get older their appetites will improve. They are 12 and 16 weeks old.

How old are your gliders?

My Willow is 12 weeks OOP and I'm getting a friend for her soon, it will be an 8 wk OOP joey little girl. Willow still only eats half her BML and between half and 3/4 of her fruit & veggie mix i give every night. She eats 4 to 6 meal worms every morning and loves yogurt drops but i do limit them to 2 to 4 in the morning after she eats her mealies and 2 to 4 in the evening when i get her out for play time before she eats her dinner. they are the mini yogurt drops not the regular size ones. she also loves honey sticks. i just tell myself that the 1 TBSP BML 1 TBSP fruits and 1 TBSP veggies to offer per glider if for older/adult gliders and i dont stress much over it anymore. her fur is perfectly fine, she is active, she drinks plenty of water, plays hard, has a great temperment & personality & sweet as can be, perky ears, bright open alert eyes, and she has solid stools, pees regularly and she doesnt have any strong smell. Even when it didnt seem she was eating much at all id see food on the floor of the cage pan so that told me she was doing something with the half eaten pieces. I still cant get her to eat chicken or scrambled/boiled eggs and some other stuff and she stopped eating the papaya & mango treats but that doesnt bother me anymore either.

The girls are 7 months old so I thought that they would be eating more normal than the younger gliders. This is the only problem I have with them, otherwise they are perfectly fine. I think I am going to make them scrambled eggs tonight.

But I have tried everything and I always end up throwing it away!

Have you tried avocado? Mine seem to love that. Everything Jadesmith1979 says applies to my kids too. They appear to be healthy, play hard, pee and poop normally and are gaining weight.

I did, It doesn't appear that they touched it. It was all dark green and gross in the morning. So I don't know what to think if they are acting fine.

I use hpw original and I blend the fruit into a mush and the veggies into a mush and add the hpw then stir that way its all sweet and they eat most of it....sometimes I decrease the fruits and veggies by half a tablespoon and if I do that then its nothing but spitlings in the morning....I don't feed lot of treats unless its morning so they will eat all their food....

asmerella, Did you say that add the HPW mix to the fruit/ veggie mush? Or serve it separately?

I mix it all together...if. the fruit has blueberries it looks like a purple lumpy mush...lol and I have 3 dishes for the three cages....I have tupperware bowls full of mixed veggies I blended with a lil water and fruit I blended with a lil water and I use a tablespoon and a half of the fruit and of the veggies even tho it says 2 tablespoons and then I add the hpw and just mix it all up.....that way everything even the corn n green beans are sweet to them....they seem to like it

Check the food that's leftover very closely, gliders will very often eat only the insides of things which can make it look like they haven't eaten very much at all. Even with things like peas and corn kernels they will suck out the insides and leave what looks like untouched food behind. With picky eaters sometimes it works well to offer them only one of their favorite foods along with something new or that they usually don't eat, then rotate each night. If that's not the case then try smoothies or relishes.

At first it seemed like mine were not eating much, but like Tigerlily said, check it close, Mine chew it and spit it out. Also make sure you are not giving too many mealies before dinner, they will fill up on them, I was doing that and they were not eating all their protein, so if I give mealies they get them in the morning before I get ready for work, they are usually waiting for them lol, little boogers! They are plastered against the cage waiting for me. If I don't get to it, I get barked at

I will examine the food closer in the morning. If they aren't eating then I will invest in a blender.

Thanks!

Have you tried frozen fruit and veggies. Dico will only eat frozen veggies not sure why lol. He is also a very picky eater. Also try melons. They also might be eating it and just leaving the skin :) good luck

I would agree, they are probably sucking out the insides.

Are you seeing "spittings"? I love seeing that cuz I know they are eating their dinner. I feed them in 2 "Kitchens" so there are always spittings on the walls of the igloos.
I also don't give too many foraging treats(pellets and dried fruits)as they used to get...they will fill up on those. And I also switched their mealies to the morning too. kinda like Jello...they always have room for mealies ;)

To add also that to get my 3 to eat a good variety I had to do a lot of trial and error....like their carrots, yellow squash, butternut squash, sweet potatoes are cooked/steamed, and their apples and pears cooked(weirdos...lol)won't eat them fresh of any variety.
They don't care for strawberries or raspberries but love blackberries and blue berries, But only liked them fresh...they didn't like the frozen ones.

I keep offering them things they didn't eat before, they might try them and eat them the next time.

Your gliders are not full grown yet, this will explain why they are not eating more. At 9-12 months their food intake will be an adults. You are also serving extra...on that note if you are going to feed extra of something let it be vegetables as they already get plenty of sweets in their nectar replacement.

Last night I left the lid off of their kitchen, and I gave eggs instead of HPW mix and this is what I woke up to! (Sweet Potatoes, Peas, Eggs, Strawberry/Blackberry/raspberry frozen mix)



It is kind of disheartening. I want them to use their kitchen to contain their mess! They had a kitchen at their previous owners house so I'm not sure what I will do!

I'm happy to see clean plates though!

My suggie doesn't have a kitchen to eat in either and she seems very happy with it. I did give her a new diet last night a mix of fresh strawberry diced, blueberries, cantalop, and spinach leaves. I woke up this morning and it was all gone. She really loved the fruit and spinach, I even let her lick some vanilla yogurt off my fingers and she started barking at me when I wouldn't let her have anymore. XD

They may not have enough room, with that many plates, in a small kitchen. Mine love to grab some food, and eat alone in the corner. Mostly my male does this, because my girl is a food thief ( whats hers is hers, whats his is hers and what ever is left is hers... lol) Maybe make them a second kitchen and see if they just need more space.

I thought about that Suggie Chef, I am still looking for plates/bowls. But they like to grab food and run to so I'm not sure if a kitchen is the best thing for them

I had a big rubbermaid container that I made into a kitchen and that worked pretty good but I got the large(oval chinchilla sized)Igloo at Petsmart or petco and use the rubbermaid lid as the floor and it has worked very well, I have the smaller igloo on a round plastic lid as the floor for the second kitchen.

I use 2 little round ceramic feeding dishes for their mixture and 2 stainless steel cat food dishes with their fruit and veggies mixed so there is only 2 dishes in the kitchens so there is room for them to move around. They usually like to perch on the edge of the dishes to eat. Pixie likes to grab a piece of food and run off and eat it outside of the kitchen but i think that is what she was used to doing...she wasn't fed in a kitchen before I got her.

My Glitch is a big time food thief. So I have two cafeterias set up. The first few days she ran herself out trying to be in both at the same time. Now she has accepted the fact that she can't hog all the food. But when it is snack time, watch out!

Mine often leave messes like this, but at least I know they are sampling everthing. And if you look, some of it seems to be the "spittings" after they've sucked all the good stuff out. I love the cafeterias because it cuts down on the splatters and messes.

My biggest worry is not knowing how much each glider is eating, although as a whole the meal is balanced, how can I tell if Glitch is actually eating her leafy greens, or if she is just chowing down on some raspberries?

I guess I'll just have to worry about their diets all the time, or install IR cameras to catch them in the act.

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Originally posted by AubreyBarto

The girls are 7 months old so I thought that they would be eating more normal than the younger gliders. This is the only problem I have with them, otherwise they are perfectly fine. I think I am going to make them scrambled eggs tonight.

But I have tried everything and I always end up throwing it away!

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my three are all in the 6.5-9 month range and all of them almost always leave behind an awful lot of food.

I fed BML for quite a while, but shortly after Tabby came home, I noticed all none of the gliders were eating all of their f/v and they all barely seemed to touch their staple. I tried every trick in the book to get them to eat more (particularly, more of the BML mix) to no avail. I was worried about them not getting enough calcium because that diet relies on the calcium-rich staple to balance out the phosphorus-rich f/v, so if they're not eating the staple then they won't get an acceptable ratio overall... so now we're on HPW original.

the first couple nights after the switch, I found CLEAN plates in the morning... but then they went back to leaving a lot of leftovers. they at least always eat all or nearly all of the HPW, but getting them to eat a decent amount of f/v seems to be a losing battle.

I've mixed the HPW with the f/v, since they like the staple, and they still manage to eat mostly that and little of the rest. I've served each component separately (3-compartment plates). heck, I've gone so far as to offer tiny amounts of like half a dozen kinds each of f/v with each kind in an individual souffle cup, both to help figure out what they liked and didn't like and to ensure that no one was refusing to eat f/v as a whole because there was one thing they didn't like in the mix and it was touching the other stuff (like how I don't like ham and won't eat things that have been touching ham, lol).

I've given f/v that were fresh, that started fresh but I froze them and that were purchased frozen. I've tried both raw and steamed versions of different veggies. I've blended it all together. I've iced stuff with applesauce (they do eat applesauce). they always pick at things... and sometimes will eat a decent amount of a certain food for a couple nights, getting my hopes up, only to start ignoring it again (this week it was cooked butternut squash).

switching from kitchens (with little bowls) to 3-part kiddie plates also seemed to help at first, but it didn't last.

I've also tried hiding a decent portion of their f/v in foraging toys; that's very hit-and-miss and (especially with fruits) can be a real pain in the butt the next morning, but it's the only thing that seems to help even a little.

I don't know what their deal is... but I do know that they're healthy and they're slowly but steadily gaining weight just like they should be. my vet's exam fee pricing is such that if I take one, I may as well take everyone for how little extra it costs, so Lemmy and Hurricane went to the vet in January when I got Lemmy, all three gliders went to the vet in February when I got Tabby, all three went again in early April just for the heck of it and all three went right back in three days after the check-up because mommy knew too little about eggplant, missed the signs that it had become "questionable" and freaked out when the gliders started dry-heaving (go figure that the one thing they've all *really* scarfed down was questionable egg-plant ><).

at this point, I figure they're healthy, happy, growing, eating all their staple, nibbling at their fruits and veggies (they do definitely eat some on a nightly basis, just not a whole lot) and if they were really all that hungry when the HPW ran out, then surely they'd find at least ONE thing they were willing to eat all of out of the 4-6 different veggies and 3-5 different fruits that are on their plate on any given night... so I've resolved not to stress myself out over it. I do continue finding new things to try and changing up how I serve things for variety's sake (even if they don't seem to appreciate it), but I don't get too concerned when they leave a lot of leftovers.

I know none of that is the solution you were hoping for, lol... but I just thought I'd share the fact that you're not the only one in your exact situation and it doesn't seem significantly abnormal. I'd say if the vet says they're healthy and you have no reason to suspect otherwise (like the obvious danger of not eating the staple part of the BML diet, for example), then do what you can to convince them to eat f/v but don't stress the leftovers.