Sugar gliders are adorable little pet creature, pocket animals you would love to keep in your home. This animal is such a cutie one, and I am sure, this creature pull people’s attention, easily. But, do remember, sugar gliders were born as undomesticated animal a.k.a wild animal. They lived in the middle of the wildlife, and of course, they inherited “wildness” behaviors due to survival in their natural habitat; so do with all other exotic animals. Unless, they were naturally born in captivity, that is another story.
There are reasons why sugar glider could make a good pet. But, they do have shocking behaviors you need to prepare such as noises made by sugar gliders. Furthermore, you need to provide a lot of things before bringing them home, such as comfortable cages, water and food containers, pouches (sleeping, travel, and bonding pouches), and toys. Keep in mind, that toy function is not only for amusement and entertain, but also exercising. Yes, your sugar glider need to exercise!
Furthermore, based on their nature habitual, taming is important matter. The relationship between both of you would not go any further into the next level if you do not consider this subject. What’s the point if you keep a pet without bond to each other? Well, today, we would tell you how to bonding with your beloved pet sugar glider in proper way. Take a sit, and here we are: sugar glider taming: very important, but how?
Build Up your Relationship Between You and Sugar Glider
- Give a time for your new sugar glider to adjust with their new habitat and home. Note this, your new sugar glider not yet recognize and familiar with your present and your scent. They would immediately freak out and tense if you start to train and handling them without given them any adjustment period. Give them days to familiar to the environmental surround them – at least 2 or 3 days. Between these days, your new sugar glider would be calmer and more relax – at least, they already know and a little bit familiar with the surrounding.
- To make a simple bonding for the first time (first day), offer them treat such as frieze-dried vegetables or dried fruits. You could also give various of delicious foods like applesauce, yogurt on the tip of your finger, and baby foods. Attract your sugar glider to come near you while offer those foods to him, to make them familiar with your smell. But keep in mind, it’s normal thing if he won’t come by near you for several days or even weeks in the first period. He might just afraid of you, but once he recognize you, everything would be fine.
- Remind yourself to put something with your scent attached to it, such as apparels. Moreover, put your handkerchief is a good idea! Put it in the sleeping pouch where your sugar glider sleep, so they could get use to your scent faster.
- Pick particular one room to place the cage without any escape routes. Open the cage to let attract sugar glider to get out from the cage, maybe with the help of some treat; then sit, in the room while your sugar glider roam outside. Once more again, to not try to handling or touch it within first period of time.
- Use a bonding pouch in the second week! This pouch is made for this type of purpose; bonding pouch is equipped with strings or lanyards to make it easy for you to wear it them around your shoulder and body, or around your neck. Arrange some times to hanging out together outside the cage and build stronger connection between the two of you.
- Sometime, this incident would occur while you touch your beloved sugar glider, he would bite you. But do remember this, in case this happened to you make sure you do not pulling away your hand or finger, and let him pull it by himself. He might bite you because he scared of you. So, do not worry to much; he would stop bite when he uses to know you more. All you need to do is spend more and more time to bond with this little creature. Ups, and don’t forget to wash your hand pals!
- During the teenage age, the biting case of sugar glider would be occur often. So, rather than let him bite you, distract them with some delicious treat. This method aim to distract sugar glider for having this such of behavior (biting).
- The last bonding method is try to touch him, particularly on the tail while he eats his treat. This would make him use to kind of touch; remember, do it lightly!
Train your Sugar Glider to Stay on You
- For first step, you could use small room as you want your beloved sugar glider get close to you. Make sure there are no rooms or space to escape, because mostly, your sugar glider would try to climb something and escape.
- Frequently wear bonding pouch and bring sugar glider wherever you would go. Just put sugar glider inside the pouch hang out in your room.
- The next step is open the zipper of bonding pouch and let your sugar glider out of it. If he declined to get out, use some treat to lure him out of the pouch. Do remember, sugar gliders are nocturnal animal, so they would prefer to get out at night rather than the day.
- Furthermore, try to place sugar glider on your body, in this particular case is on your shoulders. He might be try to jump off your shoulder in first attempt; just put him back to your shoulder or just put him close the pouch every time it’s happened.
- Do it frequently, and once your sugar glider already used to stay on you, move to a larger place as the trial. Do not ever remiss to watch your sugar glider, he always need a supervision outside his cage. Although he has been familiar with you, he would still try to escape no matter what.
- The final step of sugar glider taming: very important, but how? Is to encourage your sugar glider to hang out in your pocket. Open the bonding pocket and lure them with treat; in case the pouch didn’t place nearby, put treats inside the pouch and let him crawl into the pouch.