Vent sexing waterfowl ***Updated

Miss Prissy asked about vent sexing but I could not find my guide on sexing birds so I'm just going to try and explain it as best as I can and try to get some pics later. I've used this method for 7-8 years with about 85% accuracy on sexing waterfowl. I've tried to learn to vent sex chicks but everything looks the same to me and have no luck at sexing them.

Pretty much this is how it is done:

Step 1: Hold the bird upside down. Hold the gosling or duckling with its feet against its belly. Use your index finger to gently press about 1/2 an inch below the vent with your knuckle. The bird might poop at this point just wipe it off and apply pressure again.

Step 2: With your other hand gently tuck the tail toward the bird's back. Gently place your index and thumb at either side of the vent. Gently pinch them together. You only want to push the vent lips together and you will feel them flexing against your fingertips. Hold it like this for a few seconds and then gently push your fingers open and press down with gentle pressure to make the cloaca invert.

Step 3: If the vent doesn't fully invert gently keep applying pressure until it does. At this point if you have a male his penis should be exposed. It will be either white, pink or even dark grey to almost black depending on breed. It should pop out a little if not it should after a second or two. Females are sometimes hard to sex but should be just red to pink lips with no corkscrew like tip hanging out. Some males will hold it in and can be mistaken for a female. You can always sex them again later when they get a bit bigger never keep them inverted more than a few seconds. I can't recall how long but I would safely say 20 seconds max.

Step 4: Release pressure on belly and vent. Gently rub the vent if everything doesn't tuck back after releasing pressure. Rubbing should help gently push the vent back in place.

Here are the examples of the sexes. Sorry for the blurriness but these are one month old muscovies so they were squirming around a bit during shooting. 

This the male's vent.

This is what the female vent should look like. The white stuff is poop.

This is an example of one that was hard to determine. It could be female or a male holding in his penis.

Sure no problem. I will try to get some pics later on to show the differences.

My next day off I will be sexing my musocives and will try to get them photographed.

I read, and was told, that you can damage/hurt the bird by vent sexing.  Can you explain what you can do that would cause that type of injury? (So we can avoid it!)

The main key is gentle. Be gentle on everything. Too hard of pressure can easily harm the bird. Leaving the vent inverted too long or pressing too hard can cause prolapse. Chicks are even easier to harm so it takes a lot of extra caution when trying to sex them.

I've done this a long time and never harmed a duckling or gosling with this procedure. Every year I improve and get better at telling them apart. I hope this helps people in sexing them. I started getting straight run and sexing them myself to save some money.

I will be sexing ducklings Tuesday and I will try to get pics.