A few months ago, I decided to switch diets. I had been feeding TPG and after much research, decided to change to OHPW.
I had several reasons for changing diets, but my main one was that my gliders were horribly stained. I talked to some knowledgeable glider people and we narrowed it down to three things.
Diet
Wheel
Unneutered male
I’ll do a whole different post on the staining and how that resolved. But I figured out that because the TPG diet allows for such a wide range of fruits and vegetables, it is possible that people can not get healthy ratios of food and that can cause staining and sicknesses.
I loved the TPG diet because it was easy to make and it could easily be frozen into convenient cubes that could be pulled out at a moments notice. The OHPW diet really can’t be frozen into cubes like that, which means that I now have huge bags of fruits and vegetables in my freezer.
The cost of the OHPW diet is much higher than the TPG because one of the main ingredients in the OHPW staple is raw honey – and that is insanely expensive right now.
It is easier to find the ingredients for OHPW. Both diets have parts that must be purchased and shipped, but I’ve found that I can get all of the stuff for OHPW from one store instead of shopping around at several different ones like I had to do for TPG.
OHPW has two parts whereas TPG only has one. For OHPW you have to make the salads (basically a mix of fruits and vegetables) and you have to make the staple part which is a mixture of honey, wombaroo powder, water, eggs and bee pollen. (Find the full recipe here). Making both of these parts takes more time than TPG did.
One of the more challenging parts of the OHPW is the salads. They all have a lot of kale in them. Kale is really hard to work with and it takes up a lot of space. When its frozen, it will break into fairly small pieces and will combine well. But when I’m attempting to mix everything up, it can be hard to get the kale evenly distributed with the other fruits and vegetables.
Something that I didn’t like about TPG was the vitamin. This vitamin is an incredibly important part of the diet. It MUST be fed alongside the diet as it ensures that the gliders get enough calcium and other minerals. It gets sprinkled on top of the food every night. The problem was, I felt like my gliders just ate around it. I would sprinkle it as evenly as I could, but they always seemed to get around it and avoid it, which made me worry that they weren’t getting enough minerals. With OHPW, all the important things are mixed into the staple part and the gliders absolutely love it (its so sweet because of the honey) and they eat it all every single night.
Important Note: A lot of people think that OHPW and HPW are the same. They aren’t! Exotic Nutrition sells their version of HPW and it is not a healthy, approved staple diet. If you decide to feed OHPW, be sure to do your research and get the real thing. You can buy everything you need for the staple part from The Pampered Glider. This is a great article that answers FAQ about HPW and OPHW.
TPG Vitamin (must be fed with diet)
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