Nala and Gaz

[Chrisdoc]

Jennifer, so sorry about Trouble, I know how much you loved those gliders...hope Hurrricane is doing OK now. It´s tough sometimes but hope Nala and Gazzie are fine, I´ve missed seeing them all. Take all the time you need, we´ll be here waiting and take care of yourself first, all your little ones need you.

 

[whitelop]

Jennifer its so good to hear from you!

I am so sorry to hear about Trouble. :rainbow:

I hope everyone else is doing well.

 

[agnesthelion]

Oh no that is too,bad about Trouble it's hard to lose any pet

Welcome back and glad to hear from you again!

 

[Imbrium]

failing at sleep, still too tired to go through the whole long story of what's happened, but anyway, here's some highlights.

here's a kick-*** picture of hurricane where you can see her adorable little teef (man, I forgot how huge pics turn out here!):

and meet Lemmy (a leucistic glider):

and Tabitha (a white-faced blonde glider that possibly carries the recessive gene for platinum coloring):

Lemmy and Tabitha are my new breeding pair. Hurricane does NOT like Tabitha... crossing my fingers she likes the first joey (baby) that my breeding pair produces, though, because I need her to have a friend again.

Lemmy is a very vocal (ie crabby) little boy, he's very stinky 'cause he just hit sexual maturity, and like you'd expect from a teenage boy, he likes to wave his little manhood around all the time like he's proud of it. he's about 7 1/2 months old.

Tabitha is much shier than Hurricane, but to my amazement, has the same sweet and perfect temperament - something I didn't dare to hope I'd find a second time. she's about 6 1/2 months old... hopefully won't be too much longer before she's old enough to get knocked up. she and Lemmy have already been introduced, became instant friends, and moved in together.

also, here's a pic of the little albino het (ie she carries one copy of the recessive gene for albino) girl who stayed with me for a couple weeks. I didn't name her because it would've made it harder to give her back. she was very skittish, but a sweetie.

basically, when I got Lemmy (which involved a 3h (one-way) drive to Houston), I got him what I thought would be his girlfriend (the breeder helped me pick her out)... only to get home, look up her lineage/COI (coefficient of inbreeding), do a double-take and realize that there was NO WAY that she should be bred outside the albino line... so two weeks later, I had to drive her back to Houston. pity I was still figuring out what I wanted and didn't have an epiphany until nearly a month later, so even though I got Tabitha from the same breeder, she required a third trip to Houston.

in addition to breeding, I'm also going to be selling toy parts/toys/accessories and such for sugar gliders and have been spending an insane amount of time designing a website (which I've totally learned how to do since January). I've named the store section of the site "Trouble's Treasures" after the bitchy little girl I miss SO much. even though it's a sugar glider site, Nala and Gaz have their own "For da bunnies!" page in my store because it just didn't feel right not having any bunny stuff.

edit: oh yeah, about Tabitha's possible platinum het... platinum and leucistic are recessive genes, so normally you need to have two copies of one of them to get that color. BUT... they can interact to where if a glider has one platinum and one leucistic gene, that somehow makes a platinum glider. since Lemmy HAS to pass on a leu gene, that means if Tabby turns out to be plat het, I can get platinum babies

 

[Imbrium]

oh, and blanket apology - I'm going to be randomly necroing threads as I get caught up

 

[whitelop]

The glider breeding sounds interesting. So what color are you going for? The platinum color? Is that a coveted color?
How many joey's do they have at a time? Its all so interesting and they're all so cute! I love little Tabitha, she's a cutie.

How are the buns doing? You know we need a photo update of them right?! Just whenever you're ready!

 

[agnesthelion]

Omg I love the picture where you can see the little teeth!

I remember liking the platinum color when i was researching gliders but I knew I'd never spend that money for a pet. How cool you may get a platinum. I also feel like I remember liking the champagne color?? I don't really remember what it looked like though........? Lol

How are Nala and Gaz? Wed love to see pics of them too! Are they getting along okay?

 

[Imbrium]

The glider breeding sounds interesting. So what color are you going for? The platinum color? Is that a coveted color?
How many joey's do they have at a time? Its all so interesting and they're all so cute! I love little Tabitha, she's a cutie.

How are the buns doing? You know we need a photo update of them right?! Just whenever you're ready!

I'm actually not going for color right now (other than WFB (white faced blonde) being a 50/50 chance since it's a dominant trait), unless I win the platinum lottery. glider genetics are FUBAR from a godawful mess of inbreeding that happened like 10-15 years ago when people were first trying to figure out how the color genes worked (each colored line can be traced back to a mere 1-4 gliders or glider pairs that first exhibited or produced that coloring!) and a lot more out-breeding needs to happen to straighten everything out... so I'm taking the "less profitable but better for the species" route and out-breeding for 100% leu hets (ie carriers for the leucistic gene) by introducing Tabitha's genetics into a leucistic line.

later on, I'll take 1-2 of her and Lemmy's offspring (twin girls, hopefully) and pair them with a leucistic as unrelated to Lemmy as possible - then I'll have a 50% chance of actual leucistic gliders and a 50% chance of carriers from the second pairing.

the bunns are doing well, no fights for a long time now (*knock on wood*!)... ripping the heck out of cardboard boxes night and day... still devouring those stupid snack logs that keep them from eating their coroplast... hehe.

so I went to upload the one photo out of a huge bunch that didn't upload before my computer crashed the last time I was uploading bunny stuff... and the damn thing crashed again! FFS. worthless computer!

anyway, it's finally done - http://s1183.beta.photobucket.com/user/mareimbri1/library/bunnies

the first three pics look... odd. explanation: Gazzles is climbing/lying on top of Nala to steal Nala's craisins, which were going ignored . Nala decided to just sit there and take it. too cute!

Lisa - if you decide some day that you actually want to get gliders, let me know. I can't guarantee I can get you a platinum, since Tabby might not even be a carrier (and even if she is, you'd probably only get one platinum out of me - the other glider would be most likely standard gray or WFB... or maybe leu depending on how far down the road it was before you wanted them) and it would be a minimum of a year or two before it was even an option because gliders breed pretty slowly and I've got homes waiting for at least 4-5 babies, possibly six (granted, three of them are with me - a friend for Hurricane and gliders for my second breeding pair)... but I could all kinds of hook you up. (ie a plat and a second glider, including airline shipping, for around what two standard ("pet only") grays with local pick-up from another breeder would go for.)

 

[Imbrium]

oh, and here's another pic of Hurricane with a mealie... it came out amazingly well considering how crappy my camera is and how much it hates close-up shots of tiny things!

 

[Imbrium]

my website is still totally under construction... it's missing pics/descriptions for a few toys that I'm still working on, plus a LOT of stuff doesn't have an "add to cart" button yet because the items haven't come in yet... but I went ahead and published it (at least for now) so you guys can take a sneak-peek if you want. here's the bunny page: http://www.hurricanesleucisticfriends.com/for-da-bunnies.html

 

[whitelop]

Are those live meal worms or dried? I've been thinking about getting some for my new chicks, hoping to bribe them to come to me with treats! haha.

How are Nala and Gaz doing with the Sherwood? I went through a 12 lb bag and I don't like it. Ellie was eating well over a cup a day in food and she still wasn't gaining weight. So I switched her to the food from walmart, its not terrible for her it just has molasses in it. She loves it.

The gliders came from another country right? So what, they brought a couple pairs here and line bred them until they were all messed up? Did they line breed them for too long? Well, they say that whatever issue/flaw the parent has is amplified in the offspring, so if both the parents have some sort of flaw then its doubly amplified in the offspring. Is that kind of what happened?
Its cool you're trying to make them genetically better.

 

[Imbrium]

live mealies - gliders tend to not like the dried kind. I buy vita-mealies and LOVE them, would never go with anything else now - http://vita-mealie.weebly.com/our-outrageous-cubby-memorial-sale-page.html ... the small packages of mealies are kind of a rip-off in my opinion - if you want just a small amount to try before committing to a larger quantity, I could mail you some of mine (I bought a 3,000 pack on sale for the gliders and hammies to share).

my girls still devour the sherwood and I'm quite happy with it.

the main thing with the gliders is that the *colors* were only caught in very, very small numbers (after all, a white glider won't survive long in the wild) or arose as a very rare mutation. it, uh, wasn't really "line breeding". from what bit of it I can see, it's some line breeding/some pretty direct inbreeding... and that's just what's visible in modern pedigrees. the worst of the inbreeding - by FAR - happened on the watch of Helen Moreno, a very large-scale breeder back in the day. there wasn't a lot of pressure to keep records to begin with and, while she supposedly kept records anyway, they were "eaten by prairie dogs" (or so the story goes). eventually, she retired and most of her gliders ended up with Priscilla Price of The Pet Glider (which is actually where I got Lemmy and Tabitha from). Priscilla started what is now a MASSIVE database of sugar glider pedigrees/lineages so that there are now records of a lot of the intentional breeding that happens these days.

anyone not interested in the gritty details of glider genetics/breeding can stop reading now .

if you're actually interested in a better idea of WTF is going on with glider genetics, looking at a couple pedigrees really helps it all make more sense.

I *think* this is a complete list of the starting gliders/pairs for each line...

Mosaic Line:
Mother White (appears in a LOT of leu pedigrees because a leucistic line was out-bred to her grandson)
Mac & Cheese (also a leu starting point)
Tilly (Sterile Line) (sterility is ONLY expressed by males but is passed through the females, which was a godawful mess and renders the sterile mosaic line something most breeders want nothing to do with even though the sterility has been bred out and the males of the line are now fertile - people are afraid it could pop back up)
~ I would've loved to work with mosaics, but for the reasons in parentheses, it just wasn't an option for out-breeding a leucistic line to improve the genetics - all three lines are "tainted" for one reason or another.

Leucistic Line:
Mac & Cheese
Sammie & Sesamie
Ethan (Gabrial & Fisban)

Platinum Line:
Haley
Silverbelle

Albino Line:
Mo & Disco
~ only one starting point is why the albino lines are totally f*cked, way worse than the others. ALL albino gliders in the US trace back to a single pair.

White Face Line:
Cereal (the same leu line that was out-bred to the Mother White line was also out-bred to Cereal, but I was still able to find a girl where that was the ONLY common ancestor and Cereal most recently appeared far enough back in both their pedigrees for a kinship chart to classify them as unrelated)
Ole Yeller (Old Yeller)
Pele

Cremeino Line:
Mars & Hera
Bolillo & Reba

here's Lemmy's pedigree: http://www.thepetglider.com/pedigree/modules/animal/pedigree.php?pedid=23491
different view of it, also has a link to the pedigree for his future offspring with Tabitha: http://www.thepetglider.com/pedigree/modules/animal/dog.php?id=23491

here's a pedigree for a random glider out of an albino line - 8.3% COI (which is scary-bad in any other colored line but unfortunately pretty common in albino lines) - http://www.thepetglider.com/pedigree/modules/animal/pedigree.php?pedid=21350

here's the kinship chart: http://www.petsugargliders.com/sgkin.php - it needs to be used alongside pedigrees and COIs to determine if two gliders are truly genetically compatible. Lemmy has a 2.5512% COI (a smidge on the high side, but that's to be expected with a colored glider when the color is a recessive trait - the goal of a good breeder is to help bring that number down in future generations). Tabitha has a 1.7578% COI, which is pretty good. their offspring will have a 0.1464% COI, which is amazingly good (it'll go up a little when I pair them back to another leucistic, though). Tabby and Lemmy have only one common ancestor, Cereal, and qualify as "unrelated" on the kinship chart. that combined with altogether not terribad amounts of inbreeding in their individual pedigrees makes them a good match .

 

[whitelop]

Her papers were eaten by prairie dogs or her gliders? Thats actually pretty terrible with the inbreeding.

Haha. I think I'll stick to raising chickens.

 

[Imbrium]

LOL, the records were eaten

 

[Tauntz]

Just checked out your store web site! You did a great job with it! Very informative! I enjoyed reading your whole web site. I can tell you really love your sugar gliders & bunnies. Your "New to Gliders?" seemed to cover everything for a prospective glider person to get a feel for being a glider owner. Many of your toys both in your glider & bunny sections of your store are great, not only for gliders or bunnies but for birds as well! I'm always looking at toys & everything as a possible bird toy! lol Only had the opportunity to see gliders once at a bird show & never saw them again. Wanted to learn more & possibly get a pair but did not find a breeder near me. Wish you the best with your glider breeding & glider/bunny store!

 

[Imbrium]

thanks!

yeah, there's a ton of overlap between bird stuff and glider stuff, lol. the vast majority of my missing inventory (the stuff without shopping cart buttons) is actually going to come from a bird-oriented company.

I'd actually only seen a glider once or twice in my lifetime (the last time being probably a decade or more ago) when I decided to get them - they're quite rare, but they're amazing little creatures!

 

[Tauntz]

Oh, I know you accept PayPal but do you accept any other forms of payment? If so, you might want to add that to your web site.

 

[Imbrium]

supposedly you don't have to have paypal to check out using the paypal shopping cart... I'll look into confirming that tomorrow.

edit: I lied, I checked into it just now . on the shopping cart, there's a "check out" button and a "check out with paypal" button - if you click the "check out" button and then click on "don't have a paypal account", you can pay directly via credit or debit card instead of through paypal. I'll make a note of that on the storefront so people know

 

[Tauntz]

Thanks! I guess I didn't do as good of a job checking it out as I thought! lol I always check payment options prior to placing any orders. So often I go to sites & find things I want to order only to find out I don't have a suitable way to pay.

 

[JBun]

Welcome back!!! Sorry to hear about your glider It can be really hard to lose our pets. I still get sad about losing Dash, and it's almost been a year since she died. It looks like you've been pretty busy though.

I have to say that I sure missed having you in the 'infirmary support group', haha. If I didn't feel up to typing up how to treat stasis, I would go back to a thread and you had gone and typed up what to do. Kind of nice to know there's someone else out there covering it too. There are a few others that will occasionally chime in, but you and I seemed to be there pretty consistantly. Good to have you back