Introduction

The LGRS Suggie Soup is an economical, lower-fat, lower cholesterol, higher calcium, higher protein recipe than similar recipes that use expensive, imported ingredients. This is the standard recipe for all rescues and animals being rehabilitated at Lucky Glider Rescue & Sanctuary. You can dilute the finished product with water and syringe feed it to gliders who are suffering from metabolic bone disease or hind leg paralysis. It is important to first take malnourished gliders to the vet as they are often candidates for a subcutaneous calcium injection and other treatments.

THE SOUP ALONE IS NOT A COMPLETE DIET SEE THE FOLLOWING PAGES FOR SUGGESTIONS ON FRUIT / VEGGIE / MEAT COMPOTES TO SERVE ON THE SIDE OF THE SOUP

Details

Directions
  1. Cook and scramble egg, set aside to cool
  2. With a blender, powder the bee pollen and dehydrated fly pupae together so it is one fine powder and set aside
  3. Warm honey using a hot water bath method or microwave.
  4. Mix warmed honey and juices in blender
  5. Add protein powder and yogurt to the juice and honey mixture. Blend till smooth [depending on the size of your blender. You may need to blend the rest in stages]
  6. Add egg and pollen/pupae mix into the liquid ingredients. Blend until smooth.
  7. Pour into small freezer-safe containers for freezing use containers that you can put in the fridge with enough to last two or three days. If you have two gliders who will only eat two tablespoons per serving, those containers can be pretty small. You can freeze the soup in ice cube trays and pop the frozen cubes into freezer bags.

Feeding Instructions
Offer 1-2 Tablespoons of the mixture alongside 1 Tablespoon of fruits and 1 Tablespoon of vegetables per glider nightly.

How to Feed

Serve Each Glider PER Night-

  • 1-2 Tablespoons of the LGRS mixture
  • 1 Tablespoon of fruits
  • 1 Tablespoon of vegetables
Fruit/Veggie/Meat Rotation

Sample Fruit, Veggie and Meat Compote Rotation

Please remember that the LGRS Suggie Soup is NOT the entire diet for a sugar glider. In addition to the soup, you’ll need to prepare fruit/veggie/protein compote dishes. Here at the rescue, we serve the soup on one side of a two-compartment cat dish.

It’s always a good idea to rotate the compote dishes for variety. For example:

Sunday… Orange Slices, Halved cherry tomatoes, diced cucumber and diced chicken (cooked)

Monday… A plop of cottage cheese, watermelon, papaya chunks (8 parts), and corn (one part).

Tuesday… Diced chicken (cooked), melon, broccoli, peas, and a plop of yogurt

Wednesday… Lean hamburger (cooked), mixed into a meatloaf with corn, peas, and berries on the side.

Thursday… Scrambled eggs with green peppers, strawberries, and cucumber, and a few tiny pieces of plain cheese (add calcium)

Friday… Turkey chunks with a medley of papaya, watermelon, and corn on the side

Saturday… A plop of yogurt, cooked lean hamburger meatballs (tiny), apple and cherry tomatoes cut in half.

If you follow the soup recipe well, and you use the calcium-fortified orange juice, you will not have to worry about fixing the upside-down ratio of some of these compote dishes. The ratio of the soup itself is 2.21:1 Ca:P so this should even-out well with these examples. But if you intend to serve upside-down ratio side dishes with regularity, you can add a pinch (1/8th of a teaspoon) of calcium across eight servings to compensate.

Batches & Freezing

Batches and Freezing

One “batch” of this recipe will produce about 7 cups. With a two tablespoon serving per glider per day, a batch would last a pair gliders two months, depending on waste. You need to keep the bulk of your batch frozen and only transfer amounts needed for a few days at a time into the refrigerator. Please note that as a rescue we err on the side of over-feeding especially when nursing malnourished rescues back to health You may be able to cut back the portions to a tablespoon and a half if the glider is generally healthy. You can water the formula down if they are getting fat. A full grown adult male should be about 150 grams. Gliders that get out of their cage every night and exercise for a few hours usually don’t get fat.

More Details

More on Fruit, Veggie and Meat Compotes

Start by offering two tablespoons of compote per glider in addition to the soup. Watch out for high phosphorus contents of meats. You can offset the upside-down nature of meats by adding a pinch of calcium over 8 or so servings.

For other compote examples see: http://www.sugarglider.com/nutrition/publicrecipes.asp

Two sample compote recipes on the site include:

  • Corn / Papaya Example (LuckyGlider)
  • Eric’s Example recipe (Eric Coleman)
Disclaimer

There will be other recipes on the public recipes page at sugarglider.com. Just being there does not make them automatically correct. You have to check. Inside of each recipe’s nutritional analysis, be sure to scroll down and ensure a good balance of calcium vs. phosphorus. A 2:1 Ca:P ratio is the general rule of thumb.

Misleading Ratio Warning

Many dark, green leafy vegetables such as spinach and turnip greens tout high amounts of Ca and a favorable Ca:P ratio. This is misleading. Dark, green leafy vegetables are usually high in oxalates. This substance is known to bind to, and prevent the digestion of Calcium in the host plant. This means despite the “high”

Ingredients

AmountIngredient
8 ounces / 1 cupCanned Mango Juice or Liquefied Fresh Mango
8 ounces / 1 cupCanned Papaya Juice or Liquefied Fresh Papaya
16 ounces / 2 cupsCalcium & Vitamin D Fortified Orange Juice
16 ounces / 2 cupsFiltered Honey *
1/4 cupPlain, Low-Fat Yogurt (Kind with 12g protein per half pint)
1Small Scrambled Egg
1 TablespoonTrader Darwin’s Vanilla Flavored Soy **
1 TablespoonDehydrated Fly Pupae ***
2 TablespoonsBee Pollen ****

* Footnotes

FOOTNOTES

There are some “LGRS Starter Kits” available on the market so you can try a small amount of the recipe without having to buy bulk ingredients.

For example: http://www.etsy.com/listing/104339962/lgrs-suggie-soup-samples-trader-darwins 1

* We prefer filtered honey instead of raw, comb, or unfiltered honey. If you use raw honey, use a sieve to filter out the wax particles or other debris.

** You can get Trader Darwin’s Vanilla Flavored Soy at Trader Joes or online. Other vitamin fortified soy isolate products will work, but compare them and try to come close to this nutritional profile. A suitable substitute is Arnold’s Choice Possum Milk Replacer. A third choice is Designer Whey.

*** Make sure to get DEHYDRATED Pupae *not* the Larvae. Dehydrated fly pupae is available from various sources:

**** Bee pollen is available on line at www.BulkFoods.com You can also buy it at local “Whole Foods Market” or GNC nutrition stores.

This diet plan was formulated by Ed and Gail, founders of the sugar glider sanctuary. The diet was formulated in an effort to improve on the Original HPW but also to try and mimic a more natural sugar glider diet. Consequently, the diet is made with some odd ingredients making it hard for many owners to feed the diet. Since it is formulated for rescues it is intended to make gliders gain weight, many people often miss the modification that states the honey can be reduced if weight gain occurs. This diet itself is balanced and can be fed alongside a variety of balanced fruits and vegetables, it is also lower in iron, fat, and cholesterol.

Results

Here at Lucky Glider Rescue & Sanctuary, we have been using variations of this basic recipe since 2007. Early in 2007 we fed the HPW diet but later made adjustments accounting for our desire to improve the calcium ratio and to reduce the cholesterol from the eggs. The “before and after” photos below show how well gliders respond to a high protein diet such as HPW or LGRS. The example of Dottie on the top shows the favorable “before and after” results of using HPW (We are saying we were happy with the results of HPW in 2007). The before and after shots of Toolah and Picachu are examples of favorable results using LGRS suggie soup.

DISCLAIMER

  • — Show this recipe to your veterinarian.
  • — Let your veterinarian decide if its contents are good for your pet.
  • — LGRS Suggie Soup is only one part of an overall diet plan.
  • — See the compote section to learn more on foods to feed with the soup.

Veterinarians: a comprehensive nutritional analysis of LGRS Suggie Soup is published on http://www.sugarglider.com/nutrition/viewrecipe.asp?item=36