Please help to sex Degu

[boabloketony]

Ok ... here goes ... A friend of mine runs a local reptile rescue centre and called me to see if I would be willing to take in some degus that had been handed to her. I got there to have a look at them and it was a mother and 3 babies. One baby was really small and unfortunately passed away despite my efforts to help him/her. The mother has the end of her tail missing and has a bald patch just behind her head (neither of which seem to be causing any distress). The other two babies are thriving. The problem I have is that I am struggling to sex them. I have looked online and in many books but I cannot be sure that I am sexing them correctly. I am also unsure of their ages. Both babies are drinking from the water bottle and eating solid food. Here is a few pictures of them ...
(Their fur looks greasy in the pictures but I promise they have a bowl containing Chinchilla Sand for them to bathe in, they're just not the best quality pictures that I have ever taken)




From those pictures; does anyone have any idea of how old the youngsters could be?

From these badly taken pictures below, could somebody sex them for me?

Bigger baby ...




Smaller baby ...



I tried really hard to photograph them and although the babies are ok to be handled, they are quite fast so taking pictures was difficult so I do appologise for picture quality.

[spankingtigger]

replyed to PM

[Pouchie]

Hi,

Well done for taking them in and sorry you lost the third baby :o(

Firstly, Mum looks as though she has been handled incorrectly. I would say the damage to her tail has been caused by being picked up by the tail and it has 'degloved'. The bald patch I would say looks like it could have been caused by another degu. There is a thing called 'barbering' where some animals chew the fur from others to assert dominance - across the shoulders/ neck area is common for this. It will grow back but keep an eye on it incase I am wrong and it is mites or something that needs treatment (tbh it looks as though it is growing back already).

The bigger baby is male.

The second baby I wouldn't like to commit without another photo to go by.

Degus are pretty easy to sex. There is a big distance between the genitals and the anus in males and virtually no distance in females. Therefore the best way to sex the pair is to compare them BUT bear in mind one animal is bigger than the other.. you could also compare to Mum if you think the smaller baby might be female.

Looking at the Mum will give you a good idea what a scaled down, baby female would look like.

Hope this helps,

Pouchie

[boabloketony]

Thank you both for your replies, I honestly really appreciate it

I will try to get some better pictures. Wriggly little blighters

[Magpie]

I agree with Pouchie that the first baby is male. I think the bottom one is female but don't take my word for it, do what Pouchie said and compare to Mammy Degu, or wait til she's a bit older.