Hey all my name is Jordan a recently picked up two sugar gliders a bonded male and female about a year and a half old. They seem to be getting used to me and my girlfriend! Their names are Sugar (F) and Bandit (M). I just have a few questions about their diet I had recently ordered instant HPW from exotic nutrition (still waiting on it). So in the meantime I've been leaving dry pellets we got from the breeder in during the day and at night I give them a blend of apples, banana, eggs, carrots and water cress. They seem to like the blend but I was wondering if they get all the nutrients they need from that. if not please let me know what I'm missing or doing wrong so I can adjust accordingly. Thanks all

Hi! Congrats on your new suggies, aww Sugar and Bandit are adorable names :)
Okay, this is probably going to sound like an insanely dumb question to ask, but you said they’re male and female, so I was wondering if Bandit was neutered? ( this randomly popped into my head, I thought I’d mention it in case he wasn’t so you don’t accidentally end up with baby sugar gliders if you don’t want them).
I’m in no way a very qualified or professional person with diets or anything, but I can try to help. I feel like I should mention that Exotic Nutrition foods are often unfourtanately bad :( A lot of people agree they’re unhealthy and it’s better to stay away. Exotic Nutrition makes awesome cages/ treats/ whatever but the instant HPW/ a lot of the other foods are pretty bad. I’m really sorry if I’m coming off as rude or judge-y, because I really don’t mean it, I just thought I’d mention that ( it’s probably not helpful, because you already ordered it, but yeah) I’ll have to look into it more and get back to this because I’ve got a feeling there’s info out there somewhere..
It ( in my opinion, at least) is a lot better to stick with the “ homeade” staple diets and stuff. I feed my suggies BML ( actually, I used to feed them the instant HPW stuff). The thing I like about the BML diet is that you usually don’t need to order anything online and have it shipped, unlike some other stuff. This of course depends on where you live and what the stores around you have and stuff, but yeah. Also, it really is easy to make a lot of stuff, with the BML and HPW you basically just get some stuff and throw it in a blender then freeze it. I think by now I have most of the L recipe memorized to be honest.
Anyway, back to what you were actually asking in the first place. It’s good you’re giving them the fruits and vegetables:) What I would do, ( and I do this when I run out of the L and can’t make more until a later time or whatever) is to add some sort of protein. So I mean, for the temporary diets, it usually consists of fruits, veggies, and some protein thing. This can be cooked egg or plain cooked chicken, etc etc.
sorry this reply is kinda long, but yeah, hope I helped you out a bit and welcome to the sugar glider club! :)

" I had recently ordered instant HPW from exotic nutrition (still waiting on it)."

Just wanted to confirm what Cameron said. Most people in the glider community agree that food and snacks from exotic nutrition are crap. Which is saying a lot because the glider community rarely agrees on anything.

The glider diets from there have fillers, gliders are known to gain weight and still be hungry on the exotic nutrition's hpw. There have also been bugs reported to be in the diet ( on a group on fb ) and there shouldn't be bugs in it. I'd suggest returning it once it arrives if you can.

Many new owners buy it thinking it's a good nutritious diet because HPW is spoken of a lot on forums like this and facebook groups. It's a very common issue.

What they don't realize is there are a few different kinds of HPW diets. If you don't know which HPW they are referring to you won't know if it's a good one or not.


Critter Love hpw actually did a huge name change/rebrand for this very reason, to separate itself (a good quality diet) from a bad quality knock off because people mistook exotic nutritions hpw for critter love hpw.

This is a very simplified break down of the differences

HPW (High Protein Wombaroo diet) - where you buy all the ingredients separately and measure it out following the recipe.

Critter Love has different formulas of hpw..

1 Origional Hpw which is basically the same as the hpw above but you buy all the powder ingredients from Critter love and buy the fresh ingredients locally.

2 Instant hpw all the ingredients are powdered you only add water.

3 Breeders formula hpw specific for breeding gliders nutritional needs.
The critter love diets are to be fed with the critter love salads which have been formulated specifically for the hpw diets.


Then there is GOHPW which is hpw with green juice added and "reduced sugar"

Then the exotic nutrition hpw they have a powdered and an already made in a jar instant hpw with different flavors.


Glider diets are very confusing at first especially the hpw's as you can probably understand now, at least for me they were the hardest to figure out. The benefit of what Critter love has done is to make HPW easier to understand and easier to get the right ingredients which takes a lot of the guess work out of it.

https://www.critterlove.com/what-should-you-feed-your-captive-bred-sugar-glider The critter love site has a lot of information on it and explains the hpw diet better than anyone else can. Peggy is also very much involved in the online glider community on facebook and is always available to ask questions about her diet, which is very helpful when starting a new diet.

***One side note to be aware of if you stay with a hpw diet is the bee pollen. If you use a diet that calls for whole bee pollen in the recipe make sure you explain to your gliders vet that their diet has whole bee pollen in it. The reason is whole bee pollen can be mistaken for parasites when fecal testing is done and some vets do not know this.

The instant critter love uses ground bee pollen and will not be mistaken for parasites.


"apples, banana, eggs, carrots and water cress"

"They seem to like the blend but I was wondering if they get all the nutrients they need from that."

Short answer, No they will not get adequate nutrients from that. However, your kind of on the right path and I understand it's temporary until you get them on actual diet plan.

Again as Cameron suggested temporarily you can feed

1 tablespoon protein per glider

protein,

yogurt - NO 0 or low fat yogurt, no artificial sweeteners. Fruit flavor and or real fruit chunks in it is ok but is NOT a fruit substitute

eggs boiled, poached, or scrambled. No oil butter or seasonings of any kind.

boiled or baked chicken or turkey we stay away from beef and pork because they have higher fat content again no oil butter or seasoning.

1 tablespoon fruit per glider
apples, grapes, cherries, blueberries, melons

1 tablespoon veg per glider
peas, carrots, green beans, corn

rotate one of each category so the gliders have a little variety and get different nutrients from the different foods until they get on a stable diet plan. This is NOT a adequate long term diet.

I would also give them a source of protein for instance I feed my gliders chicken or turkey gerber baby food. Also calcium powder since calcium deficiency is common in gliders so I have a powder that I sprinkle over their food or mix into the baby food.

Just crious as to why exoctic nurt hpw is considered bad for gliders - does anyone know ???

For several reasons. It has fillers in it, inaccurate test, poor quality ingredients, gliders don't seem to get enough to eat/always hungry, there have been bugs and bug particles found in it that aren't part of the diet. Over all it's just bad quality and far to many unhealthy gliders that have been fed ENs diets over the years.

This is from a post on facebook a couple months ago

"Why I discourage the use of Exotic Nutrition's "Staple Diet". Originally posted by @Amy Ritchey She has stated that he is more than willing to talk to anyone who has questions. This is why choosing a healthy diet is so important.

"Exotic Nutrition strikes again! With permission of the owner, I am posting this from another group:
"Has anyone had trouble with Exotic Nutrition HPW mix. I ordered an 18lb bag and 5 of my gliders died. I sifted the whole bad and found moths, a caterpillar and lint balls. Calling them in the am."
Also commented to this post:
"Sadly, EN has had history of substandard food products for gliders. Tests have been done on their "Instant HPW" and the crude analysis from the independent lab testing was no where near the analysis that EN has on their product label. Years ago HPW was a recipe name using Wambaroo High Protein Supplement, EN decided to use substandard ingredients in an attempt to copy the recipe and profit from it. He HAS profited from it and many---MANY gliders have become extremely ill and many have died from this product. EN banked on the confusion it would cause with using the name HPW. Sadly the gliders have paid the ultimate price"




This is part of a post by Sherri Lamb explaining the differences between the hpw diets...

"Exotic Nutrition jumped on the HPW bandwagon several years ago creating their own HPW diets and that is where the confusion lies for most new owners. They are told that HPW is one of the best diets out there and that they should feed that diet, unfortunately they are not being told WHERE to get the “good” diet plans from, so they are going to Exotic Nutrition.

Exotic Nutrition created poorly made knock offs of Critterlove Original (formerly known as HPW or OHPW) Critterlove Plus and Critterlove Complete..... that have caused issues with gliders either getting sick, malnourished, discolored or them just not eating it all together. The majority of owners that come to us stating that their gliders are not eating the “HPW” or “Instant HPW” diets or are having issues with the diet is because they are feeding Exotic Nutrition’s HPW products and not the actual Critterlove Plus, Critterlove Complete or the Wombaroo from Passwell."

That's just two people that literally took me 3 minutes to find out of many many bad stories. Hope it helps

OMG. I'm so shocked. My breeder ( if u can call her that ) has me feeding this. Where can I get some safe stuff in a hurry

https://www.critterlove.com/ and the salad recipes that are fed with it are on there as well

critterlove is excellent and made in the USA.

you can also make the Original HPW using the wombaroo high protein powder.
you can find wombaroo on thepamperedglider.com the recipe on several sites
and youtube has a easy to follow video.

the main advantage of OHPW is the wombaroo powder is a little less
expensive then critterlove, but both I have never had a problem.

with the critter love do i have to use the salads or can I continue to feed fresh fruits veggies and proteins??

I would suggest you use the salads if you are switching to Critter love.

Any diet you feed you want to follow the diet creators diet plan, the ingredients including the fruits n veg are there for a reason.

For the critter love diet the salads were designed specifically for critter love to balance the entire meal, the ingredients in the salads are what was found to work best with the staple and provide vitamins and minerals needed to balance the staple.

The salads seem a bit complex and can be a little overwhelming at first glance, and def overwhelming when making it the first few times.

It's a lot of ingredients, takes a lot of chopping and prepping, a lot of space in the kitchen and freezer. But once you have the first batch made feeding is stupid easy and fast because everythings done and ready for the next month.

Start with a salad that doesn't have a long ingredient list for your first batch, then the next month try a different one.

When I fed critter love 2 girls helped me make my first salad because I had 12 gliders to feed and they knew how big the salad was gonna be and let me tell you it was hugeeeeeeeee and I was stunned at how much work it was with 3 people chopping and mixing it still took us all day it was no joke!

So even though I had a months worth made, I started prepping ingredients right away for the next salad. I'd get apples and dice them and put em in the freezer, then a couple days later get 2 ingredients and chop them and put em in the freezer and so on.

Until I had everything for the 2nd salad prepped and frozen and instead of chopping all at once it was more manageable for me to prep a little bit every couple days then when it was all frozen all I had to do was weigh out how much I needed and mix it in a bucket put it in gallon freezer bags and put back in the freezer.

For 2-3 gliders the salads aren't that bad and won't make such a huge amount as I had.

If you feed critter love and one of the salads there is no need to feed any extra protein, fruit or veg, the protein is in the critter love staple.