i've asked this question to a few people, and gotten mixed responses. some say it could work, others say absolutely not, don't risk it. i figure it never hurts to weigh in with you guys, right?

i'd like to start by saying i have no intention of breeding right now. i'm only 17 - i won't be looking into any of this until i have the money to put thousands of dollars into gliders, and that will be AFTER i have a house of my own. this is all just in theory. i put out enough cash into khu, and she's only one i know the expenses behind all of this.

now i'm not the best with genetics, so try to bare with me here. feel free to school me, i'd rather know than not!

say i have a male glider that's a mosaic, but he's 100% leu and some percentage of plat het. that's possible, right? they can have double hets?
if i pair him with a leu female, and another female that's 100% plat het, would that work out? would the three all breed and be a little happy polygamous family? in that case i could potentially get leus, mos, and plats occasionally, i think. please correct me if i'm mistaken.

i've heard some people saying that the females could 'baby steal', but what are the realistic chances of this and how would i even be able to tell? what if they were all put together very young?

i think it'd be really neat to have a lot of color variety without having 10 gliders, but of course, their health and happiness comes first.

please give me your opinions

I'm not a breeder. The thought scares me to death. I could barely handle it when my dog had puppies.

That being said, from what I've seen posted in the past, the only way trios work is if the two girls are actually twins. And even then, there can be baby pulling and cannibilization.

Having three non-related gliders as a breeding trio, I think, would be very dangerous. Even if you "put together when they are really young", know that they could start breeding as young as 4 or 5 months (from what I've seen posted here). That probably wouldn't be nearly long enough for them to bond close enough to each other to avoid cannibilism.

Again, I am not a breeder, this is just what I've gotten by reading other people's posts on the subject.

No Aloha, you are absolutely right. What are the chances you can tell baby stealing is going on? Well that depends on how close of attention you pay, unless of course you end up with a female who develops an inverted pouch from it. What are the chances of it happening? Very real.

Breeding trios only seem to work when the females are related. Preferably twins but sisters that are close in age can work. I have a breeding trio, mine are sisters a week apart in age. They both had their first twins within a few days of eachother. One had twin girls, the other twin boys. I lost both girls, one was cannibalised a day OOP, the other rejected and died in my care. Both boys were raised fine and I neutered and kept them with the parents so I now have a breeding trio within a family colony.
I put the loss of the girls down to first time pregnancy and overwhelming as they joth had twins. I didnt label her as a bad mum. She fell pregnant again pretty quickly after that and raised her next twins wonderfully. I've had about 7 sets of joeys from these two, all but one have been twins and they all do great together, even the first neutered boys (uncles) help out with the joeys.

I have a large cage, 6ft tall x 6ft wide x 4ft deep. Space is definately an issue with trios. If noth girls have twins you'll go from 3-7 gliders, overcrowding is definately a factor behind joey loss.

My trio works great, the family dynamics are good. But they dont work for everyone. I've never had joey stealing or even mating wounds, I struck lucky with my guys. But as I say, Iv only known them to work with related females and even then it isnt guaranteed. But with theright setup you should stand a good chance.

I have two twin females at the moment which I will be turning into another breeding trio within the next few months x

thanks ^o^

everything has a chance, but i see TONS of joeys posted all the time, and very rarely is there any complications. i know it's possible, but i like to think that odds are in my favor.

is it possible to get sisters with different hets?

if i get any more gliders, i'll be sure to make sure their cage is giant. i'm anal about khu's cage as it is. she's got one that's supposedly enough space for a trio, but i plan on building her a super extra large pvc cage as soon as i can get the extra money together for materials. :) i have no problem making sure that's taken care of before i look into all of this.

please keep me updated on your next breeding trio! i would really like to look into having one, opposed to pairs.

I would encourage you to do more research on some other forums on trios, particularly TSS and GC. You obviously don't see complications listed on joeys for sale because they are the one's who have survived. If you do some digging, you will find SEVERAL recent threads on this forum about cannibalized and rejected joeys, it is more common than most people think, and the risk is greatly increased with trios. I'm not trying to tell you to do it or not, I just want you to be aware of the risks, because they are real, and it is generally not recommended for a beginning breeder to start out with a higher risk situation. It would be better in my opinion to set yourself up for the highest chance of success possible.

I also have one trio and it will be my last. They live together great, they've done a wonderful job raising each others' joeys, but to be perfectly honest, they keep me up at night with worry far too much. Every crab, every cranky noise, I'm up to check on them, and to me it's just not worth the stress to save cage space, or the money to buy another male, 4 gliders are really not more work than 3.

And to answer your question about hets, no, if the sisters are twins, they will have the exact same genetics. The only exception would be if say, one were a color and the other were a standard gray het for that color.