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Post by Cherpi on Nov 22, 2010 14:23:55 GMT
If a brother and a sister mate will the babies be all deformed or will they be just like normal degus? because obviously if they're kept together the chances are they may get each other pregnant if the sexing doesn't go correctly.
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Post by amie on Nov 22, 2010 14:40:08 GMT
Just do your homework on how to sex Degus is my advice. You can't ALWAYS get it right, but the more videos you watch, should get easier.
If a brother and sisiter were to mate, there could be complications down the line and shorter lives lived, but they can still have a happy life. It's just NEVER advisable to mate a brother a sister, although obviously accidents happen.
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Post by smux on Nov 22, 2010 18:32:52 GMT
Many degus are generationally inbred, this means mum and dad were brother and sister, father and daughter or mother and son. First generation inbred means that only their parents were related, not their grandparents, second generation means grandparents were inbreeding too, and the generations go up from there. The more generations of inbreeding there are, the less healthy the offspring will be, and genes are deformed more and more at each level. It's how coloured degus (blue, for instance) are bred, although carefully done it is a bad thing.
My degus are third generation inbred, I think...mum suffered from cataracts (a sign that her parents inbred or were inbred themselves) and the breeder said that they were born because of mis-sexing (he wasn't normally a breeder) and my babies (or two of them) suffer from cataracts too) and now those have had babies so I have fourth generation (or something like that) inbred babies.
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