Sugar Glider Joeys Update 3

It has been six weeks now since I took Two sugar glider joeys from their parents. They were being severely ignored, not fed and even bitten by the parents. At the age of one week out of pouch I removed them and began the long and seemingly slow process of 2 hour feedings! It was very tiring and tedious, I was exhausted and became sick from lack of proper rest. It became a bit easier every week as the feeding times were spread out and the actual feedings became less messy and time consuming.One of these little critters were male and one was female. I named the male Hiccup, who was the runt and quite a bit worse off than the female who I named Tipanga. Hiccup was badly dehydrated but he had a wonderful turnaround and was doing well until around four weeks of age when he became bloated. I treated him with baby gas drops which did help but there was obviously a more serious intestinal problem and sadly he died.

On the other hand, I am very happy to report that Tipanga the female is now six weeks old and eating fresh fruits and baby Gerber sticks. She seems to be doing well. I think she is healthy. She still takes formula but it is really up to me how often. It is better to continue the formula until 8 weeks, for their health and for the bonding process. She seems to be well bonded to me and have a sweet disposition. She will allow a few people besides me to handle her sometimes, but most of the time she will crab. She will also crab if one of my dogs gets too close and she catches the scent. Which I find a bit strange since the dogs scent is bounds to be all over me most of the time. Tipanga loves to run around under my shirt and nip at me. Those claws are already quite sharp! Her teeth, while small are pretty sharp. Thank god she is fairly gentle with me and only nips instead of a full on bite.
My next dilemma is getting another cage for her as I'm pretty sure I can't put her in the cage with her parents. They don't have a very nice reaction to her. I'm just glad that she is doing well and I think she is extremely affectionate and sweet but she does have her grouchy moments! I felt very sad about losing my little male but I do feel proud that I took this little baby joey girl and gave her a chance at life that I know without a doubt she would not have had if i had left her with her parents. So yeah, It was an extreme amount of work and stress but so worth it now!