One of the most frequent questions I am asks when a prospective customer enters our booth at a show is, “are they hard to raise” or “are they hard to care for”. I am not an educated man with any more than a secondary education in the public school system, but as with most animals, the key here is common sense. We here at the Rebel Glider Ranch, have learned so much about Sugar Gliders by simple observation and using common logic. A fine example of this logic is the phenomena of the rate of growth of Joey’s. Within 25 weeks Out of Pouch “OOP” they are relatively at their adult size. I have been asked about this rapid rate of growth by customers and owners alike. Common Logic tells me this rapid rate of growth is one of Gods ways of protecting the specific species from certain predators after a shorter span of life outside the protecting confines of their mothers pouch. On the other hand, one day I had a pair of breeders that we had just “pulled” the Joey’s from and as I passed by the habitat I noticed on the female, what seemed to be a larger growth that I immediately became concerned with. I ask Ruthann to come examine the animal in question explaining to her it appeared the animal had a tumor type growth on her tummy. Being a mother and understanding the females and their specific problems more readily Ruthann immediately explained “She has milk fever” At the time we were applying the Booster Milk on the food of lactating female’s right up to the day we pulled the Joeys. We immediately went to the holding area for recently pulled Joeys and returned her Joeys to her. She immediately rolled over onto her back inviting the then weaned Joeys to take nourishment from the swollen breast. Within a few minutes the swelling had gone down and everyone was back to normal. We left the young with the parents for 24 hours to assure no reoccurrence of the problem and then returned them to the observation cage. As a explanation of the “observation cage” we pull our Joeys at 6 weeks OOP. For approximately 1 week we confine the young to an observation cage. This practice serves a two fold purpose. Most common is to assure us before selling a Joey to a new owner that the baby is capable of taking nourishment and water from a bottle by its self, but secondly to assure the mother is going to be OK without the Joeys as mentioned above. Another practice we have adopted is the use of “training leashes” on the Joeys we have for sale. The training leash is nothing but a short piece of the leash cord and one of the cord locks as used on the conventional leashes. The original intention of the training leash was to acclimate the young Joeys to having the leash around their neck. As we adopted this practice, once again common since and the need to identify animals came into play. We now use a red or pink cord lock button on our female Joeys and a blue cord lock button on our males. Furthermore to conform to USDA rules and regulation concerning the sale and breeding of exotic animals we now have specific cord colors to identify origin. All the animal you see in our cages at a show or here during visit to the facility that have a red cord on the training leash have no siblings of the opposite sex during the time frame of sale. If the cord is any color other than that Joey has a sibling of the opposite sex present or born with them and for concern of inbreeding we do not want to or by law sell you that pair. This simple but effective method of identification works very well for us and assures us and our USDA inspectors that we are abiding my the rules concerning possible inbreeding of the species. All of these incidents and practices are derived from common sense and just good logic. With love and care for the animal the rest comes naturally for a true animal lover.