Good morning everyone!

I have several questions!

I have recently befriended a glider breeder down here in South GA. I have spoken with him about several of these questions, but I wanted to get ya'lls advice.

I currently have 11 sugar gliders.

Set 1: a neutered male, and a female housed together.

Set 2: A male joey housed with 4 female joeys. Ages vary from 8-24 weeks.

Set 3: 1 female I have recently rescued who is in quarantine.

Set 4: and a trio, a male, and two females.


I want to introduce set 1, 2, and 3.

My cage for set 2 is HUGE it is 5 foot wide. 3ft deep. and 4 1/2 feet tall.

Question 1: is this cage big enough to house 8 sugar gliders? Should I look for a different cage?

Question 2: I have read that I should not introduce sugar gliders to a joey half of their size. Is this true?

Question 3: My friend told me that if an intact male is housed with 3 or more females they will NOT breed. Is this true?

Question 4: I have been swapping pouches since I obtained my joey, as I wanted to house him with set 1. How long do I need to do this before it is safe to let them meet?
I have been swapping pouches for approximately 4 months.
I'm mostly scared because of the size difference! I am just wondering if this is a valid concern!

Thank you for reading, and any advice you may give ^^

my opinion

Q1. I have 6 gliders in a 6 by 6 by 2 deep cage. your cage sounds like a good sized one, BUT I go back to something I heard awhile ago, a gliders cage should be its home, NOT its prison. In the wild gliders live in a small tree hole during then day, then run around a large territory area searching for food at night. so letting the glider have more room to move around at times is important. I'm lucky enough to have a son go to college, so now I have a glider safe room, power outlets covered and plastic chicken wire covering windows and closet. so at night when I feed them I open cages and let them run around the room, at about 11 to midnight I put any out back in cage and lock it up.

Q2. I have heard a size difference can be bad, all the ones we did were about 1-2 years old, but some were smaller sized compared to others, 80 grams vs 140 grams and it was not a problem.

Q3. In the wild they live in colonies of like 8, and they still have babies right? I don't know the answer for sure, but find it very odd a MALE will NOT breed for any reason.

Q4. my wife would swap pouches for about 3 weeks, then reduced it to 2 weeks for some introductions. ON the last intro I have 2 pouches in each cage, but would only swap one of them. After a few weeks I noticed they were always picking the pouch scented pouch that came from the strange gliders cage. So we introduced 1 fixed male to 4 (1 fixed male and 3 females) and it when great.

At 10 gliders in a colony we had some issues, one female seemed to bully others several times a night. at 6 we have one male that does a little bullying but not to bad. My wife seemed to be the introduction guru, she would put them in tub, let them work out any small squabble, a few times stop intros if they got to upset. but in the end they were all in one cage happy to be together. (we had one failure adding 8 with 3) one of the females of the 3 was chased at night, after 3 nights we had to remove her from cage.

1 Personally I would go a little bigger for 8 gliders I had one about that size for a colony of 6 n they could of stood to have a little more room.

2 There are a few sort of contradicting things with intros....Yes it is recommended to wait until joeys are closer in size to older gliders before introducing, especially if your inexperienced with intros. Smaller/young joeys are at a disadvantage being much smaller and can be pinned easier by bigger adults.

However having said that it's not a guarantee the intro won't work or there will be issues. Any intro is a 50 50 crap shoot regardless of size, age, etc... it's basically a precautionary...but many gliders are different sizes/weights even as adults. I've done quite a few intros for myself and others, size difference has been the least major factor in my experience....but I've done so many now and know by their behavior when to intervene before anything happens.





3 FALSE. As long as there is 1 or more intact males with any number of females (related or not) they WILL breed. The only question is when will there be issues. Most very experienced breeders in the community will keep breeders in pairs only, because it is well known that breeding trios ( or more) almost always end up with issues, maybe not at first but eventually they do.

Is the male joey in set 2 neutered? are the females and the males related?

4 Four months is actually a bit long for scent swapping for an initial introduction.
Some do scent swapping that long if the first or second intro wasn't successful... but it also depends on how aggressive you are scent swapping.

Are you swapping pouches weekly, daily, monthly?? how do they react to the opposites pouch when you swap? do they go right in the pouch? do they mark it all up? do they avoid it and sleep somewhere else for a day or two before using the pouch?

Set 2 is not yet neutered, he has a vet appointment next Friday though.
I kind of thought it was a weird idea to think that they wouldn't breed. But I just needed to ask.

I do it once a month usually. To allow them to get a good scent on the pouch. Whenever I swap the pouches they happily climb into the pouch from the other gliders, and generally prefer to sleep in that pouch after the swapping.
And they bark to each other ALL NIGHT LOL

I started out with the male joey which I was given as a present from my SO, he got him from Flordia.

and I have ended up being given two different sets of twin females that were rejected, which i hand raised <3
and I got them from a friend in peachtree city GA.
They still spend 90% of my day with me if I am honest. they are very bonded to me.

I guess this does not mean they ARE NOT related? But I do not want them to breed, regardless.
I hand raised two sets of joeys, and that was two too many.


There's a reason my males are neutered haha



My mother and I have actually discussed making a 'sugar glider habitat', out of our spare bedroom.



I am very glad I asked about the cage size!
I forgot to mention that I will let my gliders run around my bedroom in the evening while I am studying. I sit in the floor on some fleece blankets, and they run all over me.
I was also wondering.... if i were to make some pouches and hammocks, and braided ropes and decorate my room like a huge cage (I have several extra wodent wheels which I have considered affixing to the walls-- would they run on them? )
Would they play in the room like a cage?

I love my gliders, and watching them makes me happy.



(the male in the trio is neutered! I forgot to mention that! They are just kind of bullies when it comes to food, so i do not want to introduce them to the joeys which are incredibly docile. )

thank you so much everyone!

I would def wait til after the boys neuter to intro them, after that it sounds like there is a good chance it will go well though

obtaining them in different states does NOT mean they couldn't be related, without lineage on the gliders there is no way to tell if they are related or not. Lots of breeders ship gliders all over the place so it's not unheard of to get a glider in Fla and one shipped from ny and have them be related.

Since there is food aggression make sure there are multiple feeding stations especially if the intros are successful, what diet are you feeding?

quote:

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Originally posted by Caelsis


My mother and I have actually discussed making a 'sugar glider habitat', out of our spare bedroom.



I am very glad I asked about the cage size!
I forgot to mention that I will let my gliders run around my bedroom in the evening while I am studying. I sit in the floor on some fleece blankets, and they run all over me.
I was also wondering.... if i were to make some pouches and hammocks, and braided ropes and decorate my room like a huge cage (I have several extra wodent wheels which I have considered affixing to the walls-- would they run on them? )
Would they play in the room like a cage?

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the problem is wires and other none safe glider items.
I put the TV in the closet behind the plastic chicken wire, so the gliders can't
get at it or pee on it. I have all power outlets covered, and the one being used
for TV and cable box are going threw PVC pipe so they can't get to the AC wire and chew it. you have light wires, computer wires?, clock wires in your room. maybe makeup, and other chemicals around.

quote:

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you have light wires, computer wires?, clock wires in your room. maybe makeup, and other chemicals around.

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definitely no chemicals, or makeup or anything like that.
My wires are inside of my desk.It's hard to explain.
But they can not get to my wires. I also have outlet covers in any outlet I do not use.


Leela
I use the BML diet :)
I try to give them each their own bowls, but occasionally they still try to squabble haha

I honestly am too scared to even TRY to breed a glider without lineage! Everything I read about breeders is scary. And tbh I wouldn't be able to deal with the stress haha

I asked about the diet because sometimes food aggression can be from inadequate diets...... but bml is a good sound diet when made and served correctly sometimes they just like to fuss lol you can do more than two stations just split up the portions so there is food all over the place they can all access, it's more of a pain to feed and clean up after but it does help sometimes...