Imagine if you were stuck in a 12 feet by 12 feet room all day, with nothing but a food bowl, a bed and maybe a couple of wooden benches to sit on. Life would be extremely boring.
Enrichment can be provided in a number of ways, such as through the size and style of cage, interaction with their humans (e.g supervised play outside of the cage, such as tent time ) , play in the cage; either with human interaction or on their own with different toys to play with, and through food foraging.
Housing
A roomy cage, is extremely important for a Sugar Glider. The larger the cage, the more room they have to run, jump and glide. If you aren't able to provide regular out of cage time, it is essential to provide them with as big a cage as you can manage and no smaller than 2x2x3. More information on housing can be found here.
Out of cage time
Once settled into their new home, most Sugar Gliders love to spend time with their owner and can become very bonded to them. Having time out of the cage, playing in the evening with their owner helps to maintain that bond and keep your glider from getting bored and lonely. Please check out our tent time page for more info on ideas for toys and play outside of the cage.
Inside the cage
Setting up a Sugar Glider cage can be a lot of fun for you, as well as for your glider. It is a chance to get creative, whether you use more natural objects, like glider safe branches and plants or man made toys designed for small pets and human babies or a mixture of both you can help to relieve the boredom of a empty cage and keep your pet mentally and physically fit. Toys can help relieve stress, which could lead to self mutilation. It also helps gliders with obesity which could cause other health issues.
It is good to have some spare toys on hand, so you can change items around every few weeks. Our gliders love it when we change their cage round and run around checking out all the different toys.
Toys
There are some good online venders who sell toys specifically aimed at gliders. Check out our Links (coming soon) page for some vendors that are Critter Hill Sugar Glider approved. :)
You can also find toys in a Walmart, Target etc, Dollar stores or in your local pet stores.
There isn't a lot of toys aimed specifically at Sugar Gliders, but you can find Sugar Glider suitable toys in the small animal, bird department and cat department. Make sure cat toys do not contain any catnip though, as this can be toxic to gliders. If you are not sure whether a toy is safe, please feel free to email us and we can help you decide.
I also love to look in the baby sections of stores for baby toys. They love to climb along chains of baby links joined together and hung from one end of the cage to the other. Rattles make great toys to swing from. We hang them from our baby link chains and also attach them to the side of the cage.
Garage sales are also great places to find baby toys for your furry babies. You might also be lucky enough to find some Little Tykes playhouses for them. They love to get inside and peek out of the windows at you. If you buy any toys from garage sales, you will need to wash them in a bleach/water mix to clean them and then rinse them in water.
Gliders also love toys they can carry around. These include little plastic soldiers or animals, barrel of monkeys, cookie cutters, plastic bangles and straws. These items can be put around the cage for them to find. My gliders love to fill their sleeping pouch with these goodies.
Plastic vines can also be used to decorate your cages. Please make sure you do get the plastic ones though, and not those that contain metal.
On the floor of your glider cage, you can put plastic wiffle balls, plastic toy cars, baby rainmakers, and a Little Tykes playhouse.
Wooden perches and Sugar Glider safe sanitized branches can also be used in your cage. These will need to be replaced regularly though, because even after washing we find they do still retain an odor.
Most importantly your glider MUST have a wheel. Out of all the things they play with in their cage, this is probably the thing they spend most time using. It is also a lot of fun to watch them.
