Hello all, we have a bonded pair of “rescued” gliders that we’ve had for about a year. They had been the breeding pair of a local pet store but stopped breeding. The little girl was very obese, but we took them home and put them in a huge cage with toys and decent food and they did great. Still didn’t breed, which is 100% ok with me. All was lovely until last night at 11pm when we discovered that the little girl had eaten most of her skin off between her pouch and cloaca. It is a terrible wound. We went to the emergency vet. They gave us an e-collar and anti-inflammatories. Today I took her to the exotic vet who sedated, debrided, cut away dying skin, lasered and prescribed silver sulfadazine, buprenex, trimeth-sulfa, paracitide, and metacam. I have her in an e-jacket but will have to put the collar back on soon.

She has to be isolated, with a collar, for the next 4-6 weeks with meds 2-3x per day. She can’t be with her mate. We will know in 2 weeks if she is likely to recover.

So, I have three questions. 1) I am making them a temporary cage to let them be close without being together. What configuration is easiest for a glider with a collar? She panicked with it last night. 2) would a bonding pouch, with me all the time, or alone in her cage in a nesting box be less stressful as she recovers? 3) is there anything any of you would recommend that hasn’t been done already?

If she’s well bonded with you and has to be separated for her mate for that long I’d suggest a bonding pouch. One of our girls had to have her leg amputated and was isolated for almost over a month. She seemed less stressed and more soothed in the bonding pouch. As for the Ecollar I’m unsure. Our girl had a massive cast, she only messed with it right before her next dose of pain killers. As for administering the medication we preferred putting it into a piece of food and making sure she ate it all. That worked out the best. The first couple weeks we tried forcing her but it was so much more stressful for her, the vet and us decided it was better. I’d just confirm with the vet that it’d be okay to do that. :/ I hope your baby girl gets better.

just make everything accessible to her, we use bird water silo's for food and water because they can access it on their own even with an e collar on.

Use an OE pouch rather than a normal deep pouch so she can get in and out on her and keep things low in the cage rather than high like normal.

You don't want her being to active while she recovers.

Make sure the ejacket doesn't irritate the wound site and make things worse.

You'll also want to give her yogurt inbetween doses of trimeth sulfa, you want to get yogurt with live cultures, no artificial sweeteners and no non fat. Antibiotics destroy good bacterial along with the bad the yogurt helps to replace the good guteral bacteria.

Did they find a parasite in her? if yes is the cage mate also being treated with the parasidic med?