Here is the recipe as posted recently on Glider Gossip by Jett, a member who lives in Australia.
Healesville Sanctuary do not publish their
diet sheets on the internet so anything printed is usually either very dated or inaccurate. This one is an old
diet circa prior to 2005.There is another one somewhere circulating is newer with less eggs, less honey, different supplement. Their disclaimer on their
diet sheets say the documents are under constant review and are modified continuously. This is because of the continuing nutrition/heath care research on all their wildlife.
High Protein Baby Cereal is not sold in the US.
High Protein Baby cereal is a proprietary brand name of the Heinz company. This has been a misnomer for many years, and whilst the protein is high, it is not significantly higher than some other baby cereals on the market. This is why when Heinz discontinued the High Protein Baby cereal in Australia (due to dwindling sales as new age mothers prefer the rice/organic cereals these days), Australian glider owners/zoos etc didn't go into a panic. They swapped over or continued to use a different brand of similar cereal.
Sustagen is a Mead Johnson product produced for the Australian market. It is similar to, but not exactly the same formulation, as Boost sold here) You might be able to buy 1 can but I think is is generally sold in a 6 pack - a lot to buy for 6 tsp that you need for a recipe that makes at least 8 cups of the nectar that you will serve 1 tsp daily per glider.
Sustagen was originally trademarked under Mead and Johnson but it is now owned by Nestle and it is the powdered Hospital Formula that is used. Boost High Protein Powder is the Nestle owned equivilant of Sustagen in the US. They did not market it there as Sustagen due to trademark laws or so I am told by Nestle Nutriton here in Australia.I was told it is same powder but tweaked slightly for the US Market. Whilst some compositions are slightly changed, again not significantly so.
However, sustagen is part of the old Healesville
diet and not the latest version. They streamlined this aspect of the
diet as the artificial nectar mix is fed to other animals at the sanctuary and they needed to make it acceptable across the board.
The purchase and storage of fly pupae alone would keep me from using this diet.
You can buy dried powdered fly pupae in US
The brand of dog food by itself would turn me off. I don't think that much grain and questionable quality of ingredients should be fed to sugar gliders or most any animal. Chickens and rodents are the only critters I know that do well on grains. The rest benefit from a grain free diet. Then like I said the quality of ingredients. I might use something like Taste of the wild, evo, or BG(before grain) but not mid to low grade over priced foods like eukanuba.
As noted above this is an old
diet and I'm not even sure they ever used Eukanuba. I know they certainly do not now and what they use contains no corn or corn fillers. However, you also have to remember a couple of things.
1. Ingredients of dog food do vary depending on standards from country to country.
2. In the case of Healesville
diet, the current suggested offering is one piece of chow per glider per day. Now this is not normal dog sized chow.. it's about the third of a size of an almond. Tiny! It is mostly for mainitaining dental and gum health. It's definitely not ad lib and left in the cage for snacks.
Now a bit of a background on Healesville Sanctuary. It was officially opened to the public in 1934 (celebrating 75 years next week!) and they have had gliders from the start. Wild gliders live in the grounds and surrounding bushland.
Over the years, it has become a research centre for australian wildlife and they built a wildlife hospital on the premises. It is not just a nice place for the public to go and visit. The research, care and nutrition of each species is under close scrutiny 24/7. Each animal is microchipped to enable proper identification and they are regularly weighed and checked. Their
diets are always under review and tweaked if necessary. The
vets at the sanctuary hospital do regular health checks on the gliders but they have not experienced any health issues. They say the only time they get to actually treat a glider other than regular health checks, are wild ones that are brought in injured.
Whilst I can agree it might be difficult for US owners to find insects and flora, I do not understand why the artificial nectar mix component of any
diet has to be complicated and why it ever became that way. There are reasons why some things being offered in the US are not offered here. Anyone ever stop to wonder why Healesville never progressed past a basic eggs/honey/water/cereal type mix for the artifical nectar mix? Food for thought.
By the way I am not advocating people to use the Healesville
diet either. This is just a post to provide information here.