I was hoping other breeders on here could help me out with a little survey... just answer a couple questions.

1) What diet do you feed and how long have you been feeding it?

2) At approx. what age do your joeys reach sexual maturity?


This survey would mostly be for breeders that have kept joeys they've bred or who got their joeys from breeders that feed the same diet as they do.

When I joined the glider community BML was the popular diet and it was also the norm for males to mature around 6+ months and females around 9-12 months. However, nowadays gliders are maturing alot earlier and I wonder if perhaps it has to do with the diet changes.

I previously had males reaching sexual maturity sometimes as early as 8 weeks(bald spots, flossing, etc...). However, since switching diets I've got males maturing alot later. I know of another breeder with a breeding pair consisting of a 1 year old female and a 6 month old male and the pair has yet to breed. The breeder changed their diets(to BML) around the same time as me as well.

Eggs, chicken, etc... have long been debated about their effect on a gliders' development so I thought I'd do a poll and see if any other breeders are having similar experiences.

I'll start:

1)The Ensure diet for 6+ months

2)Males: 4-6 months. Females: unsure(I haven't fed the diet long enough to find out).


I fed HPW for a while as well, so I can fill out one for that as well.

2) Males: 2-4 months. Females: 5-7 months

I feed HPW and have for 2 years now. As far as maturity goes, I would have to say that the few joey's I have kept matured around 4-6 months for the males and around 6-8 mos for the females. Some I have neutered at about 3-4 months, so I can't say what might have been.

my gliders have been on the suncoast diet for close to 3 yrs.
my one breeding pair- leah matured around 6/7 months and
lakota around 4 to 5 months.

regards,
nancy in detroit

I am feeding HPW and Junior matured around 3-4 months old and Genevieve I am not completely sure when she matured. She just had her first joeys OOP on 2/27/10.

I feed BML and have for about 5 yrs. My males are maturing around 5 months and females around 9-10 months. I do have one pair that has been BML since they were joeys. They've been together for 2 yrs and no joeys yet