I'm sorry this will be a little long - I have a 9 month old joey that has had a lot of health problems that seem to stem from an intolerance or allergy to wheat/grain products.

I don't know anything about her background or breeder. A friend gave her to me (as a surprise gift) because I had recently lost a glider and they bought her from someone who lied about where she came from.

She came to me on a pellet diet, having horrible diarrhea, I switched her to a very well known, successfully fed diet and she quickly started acting like she was very hungry. I offered her a few different pellet options (over time) to help satiate her and this is how I discovered she cannot tolerate any glider/insectivore pellet food and the common ingredient seemed to be wheat.

I stopped all pellet and kept her on the base diet with the fresh food additions the diet called for. During the next 6 weeks she was on the diet (with no pellets) she acted more and more hungry even though I ended up feeding her double the adult serving of food every night (she was 7 1/2 months old during this time). She still cleaned the bowl every night and hissed for food in the morning. (As an aside, she was not having diarrhea).

My life took some stressful turns and since I assumed it was a healthy diet for her (which as I said, it has been successfully fed to many gliders, so this is not a commentary on this particular diet which is why I won't be identifying it) I just thought she was acting stressed because I was.

She was not stressed, she was starving to death. She started seizing and we found she had dropped down to 58 grams. I talked to my vet again (who has been involved the entire time) and she was started on Herbivore Critical Care mixed with Carnivore Critical Care...she started in with the severe diarrhea...because yep - the HCC has wheat up high in the ingredient list.

I switched her to the Ensure diet, with vet approval, because I have experience feeding it to sick gliders. There is a good about of fat/protein to satiate her and there is no wheat products in any part of it and she is recovering well (89 grams).

I spoke to a friend this week and was telling her about the weird situation with my glider...she told me she is also allergic to wheat (not gluten allergy/intolerance, but wheat products specifically) and said the way this manifested in her was that even after she stopped eating bread, and even though she was eating extremely healthy foods, she was still extremely malnourished with eating even a very small amount of wheat products because the wheat allergy caused inflammation which built up over time and meant she couldn't properly digest and absorb nutrients. This *could* explain why Evie has diarrhea with high amounts of wheat/grains, no diarrhea with low amounts of wheat/grains but is still malnourished.

Also - when she was on the pellet diet, she was gaining weight for a while. She was 72 grams at her 4 month appointment, and she was 76 grams at her ~6 month appointment. I just thought she was a small glider. One of my other gliders was between 69-71 grams her entire life and very healthy.

So - has anyone ever seen anything like this? Other than a strictly fresh foods rotation diet (no base diet) or Ensure diet, are there any other options for diets? Am I forgetting something? Anyone have any insights or ideas about any of this?

Gretchen,
I am glad you are here, however, very sorry for the circumstances.

Your Little Evie is indeed a puzzle. Having read your post several times, I am also not sure what could be causing her such distress especially since she appeared to be doing well initially on the pellet diet she came to you on.

You didn't mention how old Evie was when you received her. Is it possible there is something wrong with her digestive system rather than it being an allergy to a food product? I'm just grasping at anything.



You have been in the glider community as well as here at GliderCENTRAL for a very long time, so I trust your statement above that you choose very carefully. You know the same choices that I do.

Let me reach out and see what else I can find out for you.

I received her when she was about 10 weeks old. My feeling on the pellet diet was that maybe the problem hadn’t built to a crisis point yet, and the fact that she may have been weaned at the normal-ish 8 weeks may have been the reason she was still doing somewhat ok. Also, as far as allergies, they can not be there until they are and then they can get very bad very quickly.

I had considered a digestive issue and my vet considered hyperthyroid as a possibility too, but because she is now doing so much better on the Ensure, it seems to point more strongly toward a problem with digesting wheat/grains specifically. Even a small amount (literally one piece of Happy Glider Pellet) can send her into watery diarrhea.

She has stopped acting frantic and is now even leaving a small amount of food (and is down to eating just a normal single serving of the Ensure diet). I don’t know if it’s worth mentioning or not, but she has also never left the desiccated half moon shapes. If she eats something, she eats he entire bite, fiber and all. She is not a ‘suck out the juice’ kind of girl. The food she leaves is because it has a couple of bites out of it, or she just hasn’t bothered to eat that piece. She never spits out anything.

Hoooo Boy! She is a tough case. Part of her problem could be that she doesn't spit out the undigestable fiber.

If she is doing good on the Ensure diet and a wide variety of vegetables I would leave her on it.

BML has the baby cereal, you could go with just the rice cereal but doesn't it also call for wheat germ. So that is out. Any thin with Modified food starch is going to be a problem too as that could contain wheat.

I was Gluten Free for almost 2 years and you have to read the label on everything. Its tough.

Keep us posted on her.

I appreciate the response. I fed the Ensure diet for a number of years, and for a sick glider it is definitely great, which I guess is what Evie is. I just wanted to make sure I had covered my bases.

Also worth reminding owners something that I think can be easily taken for granted...not every diet is for every glider, no matter it’s successes in the past. If you think something is off, don’t dismiss that feeling.