Mage is completely right about what she is talking about. I also want to say that my gliders will most willingly get up and play during the day without being what you call lethargic. Mine do not get upset at all about waking up to play during the day and mine are all fed BML religiously. Bourbon is also right please bring out all the facts that you continue saying you have. We would all love to see them. You say you will state them if we want them and when we tell you we want them you show nothing. What I find sad is that we aren't even discussing your diet because you are too busy trying to say that BML is not helping gliders, but hurting them. Can you not let your diet stand on it's own merit as the BML does? Do you have to slam BML and cause all these scares to get people to use priscilla's diet? Why not just give us all the facts about priscilla's diet and let us all make our own educated decisions based on the information. If priscilla's diet is as good as you say it is it will stand on it's own merit. There would be no need to slam other diets to get your point across. I wish that we could just discuss your diet intelligently and rationally without slamming all the other diets you claim are horrible. Can we please do that? As I am sure there are a number of people that are actually very interested in seeing what this diet is all about. There are a number of gliders that will not eat the BML and there needs to be other good diets to choose from for those gliders and for gliders where their owners choose not to feed BML for whatever reason. There are other diets, but this would could be added to that list if we could learn about it. There is no reason to come on here and cause a diet scare based on no proof. Just please tell us about priscilla's diet and answer all of our questions on it as that is what people are wanting. You say you are doing this for the good of the glider, but your not helping anyone by doing what you are doing. You need to go about this in a different manner for the good of all the gliders. BML speaks for itself. Now let Priscilla's diet do the same thing.

Well said Chrissy! I also agree with Mage regarding the size of gliders being related not only to diet but to location of origin as well. I myself am from New York State and know for a fact that when wild-caught gliders were originally being imported into our state, the majority of them came from Indonesia where the gliders tend to be smaller. Thus, the majority of gliders in our state (including some of my rescue gliders and one of their offspring born 3/18/02) are on the smaller side. On the other hand, a mated rescue pair I took in from Marie in Virginia (as well as their joey born 2/2/02)are at least 1 1/2 times larger and weigh almost twice as much the rescues I took in from people within our state. Unfortunately, I do not know the location of origin as pertains to their predecessors but suspect it isn't Indonesia.

Thomas: your comment that BML gliders don't seem to survive illness as well can have a very simple answer: the fact that probiotics are being used as a regular regimen in the glider diet advocated by Priscilla may give those gliders an edge in fighting off certain bacterial conditions at this time. However, the day may also come when the regular use of such probiotics has what is referred to as a PARADOXICAL effect (an effect that is the opposite of what is intended) and these gliders will be unable to fight off any bacterial infection whatsoever.

As for your comment "I've noticed a lot of differences in our gliders vs. the BML ones. Ours are fun to play with in the daytime, they're not all lethargic. Ours don't sleep some obsene amount of time everyday. We sat down and talked about this some - we're noticing a lot of differences", I can only say that gliders like any other animals or humans have their own unique personalities and genetic predispositions. Thus, some will be more playful than others; some will be lazier than others, etc. even when on the best of diets.

Hey I also agree with Mage about overlooking the location of origins in gliders.
As it has been said 1 million times, we cannot state that one diet is better than the other. Obviously there are many options to feed our gliders but we have to stick to the diets proven so far and that suits their needs. Still in the area of research I think we're in diapers. We need time and patience to develop more research in the benefit of this species.

Besides there are many external factors that could account for a glider's death that we cannot control.

I think that every person here has the same goal: The best for our gliders. <img border="0" alt="" title="" src="graemlins/heartpump.gif" /> <img border="0" alt="" title="" src="graemlins/heartpump.gif" />
So we should do the best to try to find the answers, to cooperate, to seek for facts and to ask in a polite way because we're here to learn.
If you know something then share it because the only ones suffering here are our gliders when they die <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" /> .