I've been thinking a lot lately about why occasionally you'll hear about a nursing glider who "suddenly" dies, and I did some looking around, and found an article in the peer-reviewed journal "Exotic DVM." I thought it would be worth mentioning here.

It appears that as females get older, it gets harder for them to retain calcium themselves, and their nursing joeys get most of the calcium they intake. This results in "milk fever" or hypocalcaemia. The presumption here is that older lactating females naturally need more calcium and need to be watched for signs of HLP (which may be hard to see with joeys in and around them).

Just thought I'd throw that out there for those who have lactating females getting older. My guess is that the same would be true for lactating females who are smaller in size.

What would be considered to be "older"

I'm not entirely sure. When I think of "older" breeding females, it's at like 5-7 years. I'm not sure of the ages the article referred to, but I'll try to track it down.

Okay I was just wondering b/c my female is 2 and a half. Thanks Lucy <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Thanks for the info Lucy. Supose this should be taken into consideration if we are breeding older mammas!