How Many Sugar Gliders Should You Start With?

If you’ve already decided whether you want a male or a female sugar glider, here’s your next question to think about:

How many sugar gliders?

Remember, sugar gliders are social creatures. That means that they prefer to live in groups of their own species. In the wild, they live in colonies and forage at night in little groups. If sugar gliders don’t have social interaction, they will get depressed and depression could possibly lead to illness.

However, it is possible to have just one sugar glider, as long as you are willing to take it out and play with it each and every day for a substantial amount of time. If you have only one sugar glider, you must be absolutely committed to spending lots and lots of time with it. In essence, you will become the sugar glider’s “colony” if you only have one glider.

If at all possible, get at least 2 sugar gliders. And since it is easier to bring up 2 sugar gliders together than it is to introduce a new sugar glider to an existing one in your home, the best possible solution is to get at least 2 sugar gliders at the same time. Some sugar glider breeders do not encourage a first-time owner to purchase 2 gliders right away, however. They tell the owner to make sure sugar gliders are right for them, and then get a second one. Talk to the breeder you choose and see what he or she recommends.

If you decide to get more than one sugar glider, either because of time considerations or because you would simply like to have multiple gliders that can occupy each other while you are at work all day, two females or a male-female pair work well. If you want a male-female pair but do not want them to reproduce, you can get the male neutered.

Some glider owners say that two male sugar gliders will fight (especially if they are already adults), while other owners report no such problems. Neutering the males beforehand will help reduce or eliminate any fighting tendencies. In general, it is not recommended that you spay a female sugar glider. It is a much more complicated operation than the male neutering is, and will require a longer recovery time.

If you decide to get a whole group of sugar gliders in order to breed them, make sure there are at least two or three females for each (unneutered) male. (Getting a group of sugar gliders for breeding is not recommended unless you are already an experienced sugar glider owner who has carefully made the decision to become a breeder.) Otherwise, the males may fight over breeding rights with the scarce females. In a colony situation, one male may monopolize all the available females.

Remember that sugar gliders will breed if sexually-complete males and females are left together. Don’t be an “accidental breeder”! Breeding should be done carefully, with an eye toward creating healthy sugar gliders. Talk with experienced breeders before you make the decision to breed. Breeding is a time-consuming, expensive process that requires considerable devotion to and understanding of the species.

There is always a small chance that if you get two gliders, they will prefer each other’s company and will actually bond more strongly to each other than to you. This doesn’t mean that they won’t bond to you at all, but that one or both of them will simply bond more strongly with the other. This does not usually happen, according to most knowledgeable sugar glider breeders.

One way to get around this potential problem is to keep any new sugar gliders separate for a month, while they bond with you. Then when you introduce them, they are more likely to have the strongest bond with you and not the other sugar glider(s). But you might want to ask yourself this: Is it really such a bad thing if two sugar gliders are strongly bonded together? That is, after all, what they do naturally in the wild. They bond to each other. It’s not as if they are not going to bond to you at all! They will bond to you, provided you spend sufficient time with each of them.

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