I currently have 2 female sugar gliders, not related, who have gotten along for over a year now. I have been considering adding a male for breeding, i am aware i need to do more research before following through, but i have a few questions about this trio.

will the male mate with both the females?
and
will the females fight?

thank you in advance!!

are they lineaged?


question 1 probably

question 2 hard to say.

The best place to learn about breeding is https://www.facebook.com/groups/breeding101/

This group is a 0 drama, strictly breeding group. From newbies to veterans. Any and all breeding questions are welcome, you can search the group as well which will bring up other posts with the same questions you want to ask.

No, they are not. Once again thank you for the speedy response, i didn’t think i’d get one that fast!!!

Then I'd recommend you don't breed your girls.

Reallyyyy research breeding, ask a ton of questions then if you still want to breed invest in a lineaged breeding pair and breed responsibly

Thanks very much! Just curious, what’s the difference between them being lineaged or not in this situation?

I think it has to do with not knowing if the male would be related to any of the females. Inbreeding can cause defects in the babies.

yes it does. There is no way to know if they will be to closely related unless they have lineage.

Some folks think that just because they got gliders from 2 different people in 2 different states it should be ok and they probably aren't related.

But that isn't so, It doesn't matter where the gliders come from they could still be to closely related. Gliders have been shipped to legal states for years you can buy a glider from Ny and a glider from Florida and they could be closely related.

If you bought the girls as pet only but had the option to buy lineage you can sometimes talk to the breeder and purchase the breeding rights which means they will provide that gliders lineage.

Out of my current 9 gliders I have one female and her 2 daughters with lineage I can breed if I choose to. The rest are rescues/surrenders, personally I feel it would be irresponsible ( as does the majority of the glider community) to breed rescue/surrender gliders. None of them have lineage, and some I have very limited information of their history. They are and always will be pet only gliders.

If I were to breed more I would invest in a lineaged male, all my males are currently neutered. To do that I would speak to a few different well known breeders and ask for assistance with a good pairing for my female.

Lineage and Kinship are not my strong suite and I just don't know enough about it to feel comfortable choosing a safe, compatible male. I did not pair up my original breeding pair my mentor did it for me she taught me the basics and IF I had to I could probably figure it out, but I'd be more comfortable to let someone more experienced and knowledgeable with all that do it even though I have no intentions of selling joeys, they would all stay here.

In that breeding 101 group there are tons of people that are happy to compare lineages for new breeders to help with safe pairings. If you are really interested in learning how to do it yourself they will teach you that as well. In fact there are learning scenarios in the posts where they provide 2 gliders lineage and people have to figure out the kinship and percentage of the pairing.

Now having said all that.

Is lineage completely 100% accurate and 100% reliable? NOPE! there are some made up lineages, their are some mistakes, there are things that don't add up.

BUT, it's all we have, to do the best we can to breed ethically and responsibly.

Lineage, for the most part, is kept track of on the pet gliders site. https://www.thepetglider.com/pages/pedigree-program Which goes back to the "founding gliders" the first gliders entered in this database. Like I said it's not a perfect database, but it is safer than breeding gliders with no lineage at all.

I hope this helps to answer your question and hopefully it made you have more questions

Thank you so much!!!

One last thing before i forget to ask, will the females get aggressive with each other around their babies?

From what I've read the other gliders in the colony help take care of the joeys. Hope that helps

breeding trios can be tricky, and again I would suggest not breeding the pair you currently have anyway.

Being that you think the females aren't related, they may indeed get aggressive to each other and or each others joeys.

There is no way to give you a definite yes or no to this question.

SugarSlave, In some cases that can be true. But not in all colonies. It is more successful if the colony is made up of the breeding parents, and their offspring. In my opinion.

Example, the breeding pair has two joeys a male and a female. The male joey gets neutered and remains with mom and dad. The female joey gets separated at 12 weeks to prevent inbreeding with dad.

Mom and dad have 2 more joeys. Big brother helps mom and dad with babysitting duties. The new siblings ride on his back while mom n dad go eat, run on the wheel etc. Big brother also grooms the new babies like mom n dad would.

The first male offspring is neutered young, his body doesn't get the hormone increase when he matures, so most likely won't have a sex drive to be a threat to dad.


When you have a colony that ISN'T related, the other gliders might not help raise the joey and might get aggressive. Which is why breeders keep breeding pairs AS pairs and sometimes trios IF they have a successful trio with no issues.

The successful trios in my opinion are easiest like the scenario above OR if a pair of biological sister females are with a with a male. In THAT case the two females are more likely to be fine breeding together as a trio. But even then issues can happen.

***I am not a long time breeder and these questions can be better answered in the breeding 101 group I posted the link in my previous post. There you will get breeders experienced with breeding trios and can tell you their experiences.