New baby brag!!!

I just wanted to show off my new sugar glider joey. He's SOOOOO freaking cute and I have to share some of his cuteness before I overload!




I got to hold him for the first time tonight and he snuggled up in my hand and fell asleep. He's completely stolen my heart. *happy sigh*

So cute!! I've never seen that color before.

Aww how adorable.

Ho nice are they? We talked about getting one years ago but at the time thy said they were not kid friendly.

And Logan likes to hold his pets

So cute!!!

AWWWWWWWWWW!

Very very cute! Why is it that yellow?

LittleSniffs- gliders usually bond to a person or family and can be very sweet if they're handled daily. I have some who will godly crawl down my shirt and fall sleep in my bra, lol. Others want nothing to do with me. It all depends on whether or not the breeder handled the baby on a regular basis and also on the glider itself. Some gliders are naturally very sweet and trusting while others simply never tame down. I think that 75% of a glider's temperament is going to be shaped by how they were/are handled though. Even a mean joey can become a sweet adult.

Dino- he's yellow because his mommy is a joey-hoarder and she kept in tucked away in her pouch longer then normal, thus resulting in "pouch staining". The inside of a female's pouch is reddish. I'm not 100% sure why, but have heard thy there's dried blood in the pouch. I tend to think that it's some type of scent gland or from the male marking her though. Anyways, when joeys are in the pouch after their fur comes in the coloring tends to stain the fur. Most joeys only get the staining on their heads because the rest of their bodies are hanging out of the pouch once their fur comes in.

I will have to keep that in mind! I know we tried to hold one in a pet store once and it was just so wild I was scared of it! Bt they are so sweet looking :-)

If you decide to get a glider make sure to get one from a breeder and not a pet store.

1) They'll be more tame
2) They'll be cheaper(pet stores always charge insane prices for gliders)
3) They'll come with a pedigree so you can track any potential health issues and know if they are inbred, which they shouldn't be
4) You will have the benefit of having help and support when it's needed and a breeder will truly care about their baby getting the best versus a pet shop just caring about getting your money.

Just curious, why is inbreeding in sugar gliders a bad thing? With mice it doesn't pose a problem so long as you know what to select against, is there something weird about them?

I haven't personally owned sugar gliders before. My experience stems from my time working at vet clinics. Unfortunately the majority of gliders we saw were in poor health for various reasons, and one in particular had mutilated its own tail to the point of necessary amputation (apparently a common occurrence according to our exotics vet). Poor little guy ended up passing away anyway.

Frizzle wrote:Just curious, why is inbreeding in sugar gliders a bad thing? With mice it doesn't pose a problem so long as you know what to select against, is there something weird about them?

To start, the "bloodlines" here in America are pretty limited for sugar gliders. Due to Australian no longer allowing the export of animals it limits the gliders we have to work with. Only just recently(within the last 2 years) a couple larger breeders began to import new sub-species from Indonesia to bring in some new blood. However, there's speculation as to whether or not the offspring of the new gliders and our current gliders will be sterile. So far it's looking like they ARE sterile, which means we can only breed the females from such pairings, putting a damper on things.

There's also the issue of gliders producing so few babies. They only produce 1-2 babies every 4-6 months on average. Females normally don't have their first babies until they're nearly a year old and they stop producing around 5 years of age.

So, due to the combination of limited bloodlines and slow reproduction it's not logical to inbreed them.

Inbreeding would lead to health issues and the few number of gliders we have to work with would be even further limited as the ones who produce health issues are removed from breeding.

In fact, just recently it was discovered that a certain line of gliders occasionally produces offspring with what looks to be Cerebellar Abiotrophy, simply referred to as the "Wiggle Gene". It only occurs when the lines are inbred. As long as no close pairings occur the condition doesn't rear it's ugly head.

However, that 1 line is bred into pretty much every line of "colored" gliders in existence today. So, to remove that line from breeding programs would cut the number of pedigreed gliders by about 75%, possibly more.

Using that as an example you can see how it's simply not an option to inbreed gliders. It's better to simply use care to NOT inbreed then to inbreed and eliminate "unclean" lines.

I take great pride in all of my babies and use extreme caution to ensure that they have the best possible pedigrees out there. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a bit of a lineage Nazi when it comes to my sugar gliders, lol!

Here are some updated pics of my special little man:










I've decided on a name for him too! His name is now Pig-Pen(like the character from Peanuts)! He's such a dirty little boy that I thought it was fitting, lol.

We've actually contacted some organizations in Australia, and it is legal to export animals now, for individuals, excluding certain animals, which may include sugar gliders, though I don't know.

We're actually loosely planning an import of recessive manx.

Just a side note!

Sadly, since sugar gliders are native to Australia I'm pretty sure they're going to be excluded from the list. It's probably just for non-native animals, like mice, dogs, cats, etc... so that breeders can export animals.

I'm glad to hear that they're finally loosening up their laws a bit though!

If that Manx export goes through, let me know. I might be interested on getting in on the action(if you're going to be including multiple people). I would love to get some Manx without having to sign a ridiculous contract, lol.

Thanks for the answer! I suppose it makes sense that if they have so few offspring that inbreeding to eliminate the problem could just result in no useable offspring. What do you do when you need a certain color? How many generations/steps away do you consider acceptable before you breed them back in? Seems like you'd need to keep a lot of gliders for that much diversity, blah.

I think I'd stay away from that hybrid almost entirely, it makes me think of Dik Diks, and how this zoo discovered that their fertility issues were because they working with two different subspecies. They then had to eliminate all the hybrids and separate the two subs because there were barely anymore "true" males left of either sub species.

You're little pig-pen is super cute, btw!

Love2read wrote:If you decide to get a glider make sure to get one from a breeder and not a pet store.

1) They'll be more tame
2) They'll be cheaper(pet stores always charge insane prices for gliders)
3) They'll come with a pedigree so you can track any potential health issues and know if they are inbred, which they shouldn't be
4) You will have the benefit of having help and support when it's needed and a breeder will truly care about their baby getting the best versus a pet shop just caring about getting your money.

Trust me, I wont get one from a pet store! I've learned my lesson with mice LOL

Your site is down by the way, I just went to show my son and it wouldn't work :-(

Very cute baby!
That is very interresting about gliders. Thanks for sharing!


And Casey- I would be interrested in the shipment as well.