My female glider is about 7 weeks IP and I have been feeding her her normal diet(instant HPW, dried mealworms, pellets from exotic nutrition, and fruit veggie smoothie mix) along with some chicken baby food and some vanilla Ensure. Today I was holding her and I noticed around her front legs that her fur is turning yellowish. I know the yellowing fur can be cause by bad diet. She is a small glider to the point where she hasn't grown much since the day I brought her home. My male is huge by comparison. So my question is the yellowing normal because she's carrying joeys and lactating or should I change her diet quick?

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her normal diet(instant HPW, dried mealworms, pellets from exotic nutrition, and fruit veggie smoothie mix) along with some chicken baby food and some vanilla Ensure.

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I would make a change in her diet.

The pellets from exotic nutrition are mostly JUNK but will fill her up so that she does not eat the foods she does need each day. I would NOT offer Ensure - it is not formulated for a small animal's nutritional needs and again, will fill her up so she does not eat the foods she does need.

I am not a fan of the instant add water only HPW because it contains additives to prevent the dried honey from caking during storage. Gliders just do not need these additives.

I do not know what you are including in the fruit and vegetable smoothie, but gliders have teeth and are fully able to eat fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables.

There are many widely used glider staple recipes and feeding plans that will provide the protein, vitamins and calcium your gliders need daily. I have links to these feeding plans on my web page to help you locate the information to choose one that will work best for you. My own GliderKids feeding plan is one option you might consider. These staples are fed with a wide variety of fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables each night.

http://www.gliderkids-diet.com/Staple-Recipes.html

feel free to ask questions if you need help choosing a feeding plan for your gliders.

I have never actually witnessed them eating pellets, ever. I just have them in the cage just in case.

I am planning to switch to the regular HPW diet soon. Is there are major difference between the Wambaroo powder and ZooPro Protein.

That's sad about the Ensure. I was reading about a diet for gliders that uses the Ensure for the main protein supplement.

The smoothie isn't really 'smooth'. It consists of mango, strawberries, applesauce, peas, carrots, cucumber, yogurt, apple juice and some other stuff. The big stuff is just chopped up with a quick chop gadget.
Edit: I add the glider cal powder and the multivitamin into this mix as well.

I will look into your suggestions.

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That's sad about the Ensure. I was reading about a diet for gliders that uses the Ensure for the main protein supplement.

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The diet you are referring to was called Darcy's diet - the Ensure was used as a vitamin supplement and calcium powder was added to it. The diet still required protein foods, fruits and vegetables to be served with it. The diet was used primarily for a glider named Lord Darcy that had cancer and needed extra calories to maintain his weight.

The ZooPro products sold by Exotic Nutrition are very new - less than a year on the market so there are no long term observations on how well gliders do when fed this product long term.

If you want to prepare the Original HPW you can order Wombaroo High Protein Supplement from the Pampered Glider

http://www.thepamperedglider.com/supplements.htm

You can also make HPW Plus which uses a powder sold by Peggy Brewer. It is made exactly the same way as the Original HPW recipe adding your own fresh honey, eggs and bee pollen. It costs a bit more than the Wombaroo High Protein Supplement.

http://www.critterlove.com/diet-info.html

You do not need to add additional vitamins to HPW - too much vitamins are just as bad as not enough. The fruits and vegetables provide many of the vitamins and minerals your gliders need. I would just cut them up and not add apple juice to them.

I compared the ingredients list for wambaroo and ZooPro and they were the same ingredients in the same order, so there may be slight variations in the amounts of them.

I'll inspect my male tomorrow for yellowing on his underside. If he doesn't have any then it's the ensure.

I'm mostly worried about my female because she's just so small. She looks like a pear now.

I agree: definitely ditch the pellets and the Ensure. For the "just in case" I think it's okay if you put at FEW pellets in the cage in the morning after the gliders have gone to sleep, just in case you can't get home to feed them on time because something happened. Ideally you will remove them uneaten before they wake up, as pellets are made up of fillers and are nutritionally useless compared to fresh fruits/veggies and HPW. I recommend that you stop using baby food, yogurt, and apple juice, except for as treats. Apple juice is never really necessary and is very high in sugar and has preservatives, so I would just cut that out. Yogurt is okay as a treat but it is high in protein, which the HPW already has in it. If you continue to use yogurt, make sure it's a small amount AND that is does not contain any artificial ingredients like aspartame, which can be deadly to gliders. As for the baby food, we keep a few jars in the fridge for an emergency meal and for treats, but it isn't necessary to do that regularly. All you need is the HPW mixture, fresh fruits, and fresh veggies, keeping an eye on the calcium/phosphorus ratio as best you can. (And mealies, yogurt drops, etc as treats of course!) I agree that the instant HPW isn't as good as the others, but it is better than what many people feed. You can use up what you have at least, but I would recommend switching to maybe HPW Original, where you add your own fresh eggs and honey. The glider kids website has an Original HPW version that simply has added calcium, so that you don't have to work so hard to get their ratio up. I don't know about your glider's yellowing but that's my take on diet. When our female was nursing her fur turned straight up brown for awhile even on a very good diet of Original HPW and a variety of fruits/veggies. Nursing takes a lot of nutrients out of them, so it could be just that, or she may not be eating enough of her healthy foods due to all the extras in her diet. Good luck!

Ok , thanks for your help.
I am one of those people who does research on everything and there is a lot out there about diets and such. There are people who have had success with the stranger diet and others that don't. I will keep an eye on my female. I have a feeling the joeys are sucking her dry and she'll go back to normal after they're weened. But I will be making some changes to their diet in the near future.