AAAHHH German Giants

hey there i am wondering if anyone has a german giant bearded dragon and could post some pics and tell me how they take care of them plz lots of info appreciated i am thinking of getting one.

I have two...what would you like to know?

I mean mine are still babies. They don't require anything different than a regular bearded dragon...They just may get a couple inches bigger. My male is maybe 2 months old and he is already 12 inches. He eats like a horse....I mean in a setting he eats 15 medium sized crickets, full serving of greens, and 25 pheonix worms size large. He is a beast and eats me out of house and home. I stop him after a while because sometimes I think he's going to burst. He is constantly shedding, he sheds and then the next week he's already in another shed. His sister however is smaller about 8 or 9 inches and she eats about 20-25 crickets in a setting plus a huge serving of greens.Making that a total of 50 crickets average per day. She sheds every two weeks or so. She may be a late bloomer because her sister was attacked by my older bearded dragon while that baby was in the cage. She watched the whole thing and is now just recooping and its been a month or two. I also stop her because her tummy feels so tight like a big huge knot.

Compared to a regular baby, I have two of those as well....my leatherback we got at the same time as the two. He is around a month older I believe and he is only 6 inches long...he eats 15 worms in a setting and only half as much greens. And sometimes he only eats 10 worms....he wont eat crickets. The female bearded dragon is about 4 months old and she eats around 20 crickets in a setting and two servings of greens. I just say the only difference is that you have to feed the german giants more food than the regular kinds. When they are adults I assume they will eat two giant salads a day and half as many bugs as my regular adults.


here is the three babies at my fiances house. Bottom is a normal middle is the german giant who is a great deal younger than the 4 month old on the bottom and then the top is my male we got the same time as the male german giant.


here are the two boys a couple days after we got them both. See how they look pretty similar in size. German giant left/ normal on right.


I took this photo a couple days ago the same two in the picture above.German giant on left normal on right.


And here is his sister. She is a great deal smaller than him but she's going to catch up now that shes increased her eating.

Sorry to say that most people that buy a GGiant cross are just getting a large Pogona Vitticeps. Sometimes not even that.

Here is what I typed in another post asking about GG.

German Giants are more than just big.
They are a diff crossing of dragons entirely.
Think of a doberman pincher vs a rottwiller. The dobie is leaner while the rotty is thicker with a diff bone structure.
True german giants can range between 24 to 32 inches tip to tail. Once you start cross breeding them to regular dragons you rapidly loose the genetics that made GGiants different in the 1st place

And here is the thread.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=141151

I need to double check but I think German Giants are originally a cross between Barbata x Vitticeps. If you stop adding barbata bloodlines in 3 to 5 generations you simply have vitticeps again.

German Giants....you will always get a different opinion on anything about them. What is known and published is that they were imported from Germany many years ago [ hence the name] and are actually just a very large strain of Pogona vitticeps, I don't believe mixed with Barbata. Kevin Dunne had a female that reportedly laid over 60 eggs, and his website has a pic of this female. [ Dragon's Den heretoculture] They are large for the same reason that people are large. In other words, if Shaquille O'neill had children with a very tall woman, you would never expect to see their children be much smaller than they are. If all their children married equally large partners, the men in the 6'10 range, the women 6'2-6'5, it would continue to be a " family" trait. Once they started having children with shorter people, you would get a mix. This is a reasonable scenario, because there are dragons of all sizes today [ with several factors that contribute] but genetics is definitely one. Not everyone can really prove or disprove what is in a dragon's genetics for sure these days, and some people will continue to say they are this or that, including G,Giants.

Yes exactly if you get a dragon proposed to be german giant it doesn't necessarily mean it is going to get as large as the breeder says. So if you get one it may not get that large. My two babies came from parents that were well over 24 inches long so I propose they will reach that close hopefully. The breeder said that the mom is a beast...

If your thinking about getting one make sure that you see the parents...in person. Its still not 100% full proof though....Like my female seems she may not get that big. I have hopes that she will but I know that the male will most likely be big. They are both big for their age but Zippy my citrus tiger reached 19 inches at 5 months...and he is still growing. So really you never completely know.

I have decided to make some inquiries into this at the source....lol I have some calls and emails to some breeders I know with strong ties to Germany.
At least we can start putting some stories to rest.....lol Im more curious for My own benefit.

Yes, Tom, there are and always will be varied opinions. Pete Weiss is reportedly the one [ he is German] who imported them in to the U.S., I believe in the 90's. The name "German" is because they came from Germany [ I believe the zoos had them] and of course, all dragons are from Australia, so the person that imported them gave them the name. They could have been called anything he wanted to call them, but G.Giants is what they were called. Being as this morph is not around the way it used to be, breeders today, even if they have ties to Germany, or are German themselves, may not have a lot of answers about these dragons, especially if they have not been breeding for a very long time, 15-20 years.

Pete Weiss wrote at least one article for Reptiles magazine....probably more than one, and I believe they were between 1995- 1998 that he describes some of the morphs he worked with. I have the mags. somewhere in a box.....too tired to look !!

Ok im striking out.
Im getting basicly the same story lines we are finding everywhere...lol
The only thing im getting from my European friends is that the originals where sometime in the late 80's
Ok I quit.....lol I cant prove or disprove my statement so i stand down.

I have a little one that was sold as a "GG". She is 700+ grams, but only a bit over 21".

I have heard that there is a difference in the structure of the head between GG and regular, not sure if that's true, though.

thanks a lot guys all the info and posts were very helpfull

I am also very curious about this topic.