Puppy Mill of Beardies

[BeardieMommy3991]

I think this is an appropriate forum for this to go in. I joined a bearded dragon group on facebook, and one member was showing off her new dragons. But I noticed something was a bit off....

These dragons looked like your normal, run of the mill beardies, but the post claimed that they were all German Giants. They were 21 inches at most, full grown. Since I have a 24 inch male with no GG genes whatsoever, I called BS.

They posted the breeder, which was another flag. The Gentle Giant Breeders.

This is where it gets grisly. They only have a facebook group, no website, and are breeding masses of skinny grey babies they are claiming to be giants.

They are kept on sand, with 10 or so to a tank. They brag about 20 inch dragons, who are almost skin and bones.

One of their posts advertising babies says that they even sell to pet stores (I'm guessing where all those deathly babies come from)

Here is the link if you'd like to grimace over it yourself. :/ I'm so glad I joined here long ago, and didn't fall prey to "breeders" like these.

https://www.facebook.com/thegentlegiantbreeders

 

[AHBD]

Hi there beardiemom ......First of all, I don't know these people or anything about them. I glanced at a lot of the pics and they don't seem sickly or mistreated at all, I saw maybe one thin adult but the babies I saw look pretty healthy. A few pics show 23" dragons, others near that size at 12-13" months.

As for claims of being G.Giants, they may have bought their stock from people who claimed that's what they were. No one can really disprove or prove the G.G claim completely. For instance, your large dragon probably has G.G in his background. Some of the first beardies bred on a somewhat large scale in this country were G.G.....so they formed the basis + dropped their genetics in to a lot of the descendants of our current population of beardies. If you think of it this way, there are tribes in Africa that are very tall people. If they have descendants that moved here + had kids, some of them would also have the propensity to be very tall. This would be so even if they had more normal sized spouses. So the tall " gene " is still in their family tree and would be more prominent depending on who they had children with, tall X tall would bring taller offspring.

It's the same with beardie. Large ones may very well have the G.G gene in them. No one can def. say one way or another, but some breeders will use that term .

As for babies raised 10 in a tank, many breeders do that up to a certain size, as long as the tank is big enough this is not a problem.

 

[neacail]

I checked the Facebook page expecting to be appalled . . . but I'm not.

In only saw juvie that might be a bit underweight. I saw a lot of really nice looking beardies that I'd be more than happy to plunk down cash for.

I don't like that the babies are kept on sand. But, my beardie came from a renowned Canadian breeder who keeps babies on sand, several to an enclosure, and he has been doing this for well over a decade. I'd buy from him again in a heartbeat. While he and I don't always see eye to eye on husbandry issues, what he's doing sure seems to work well for him and his animals. He has my respect.

I have no reason to doubt that the "Gentle Giant" dragons have some GG dna. They're producing some very nice sized dragons. My guy is tiny in comparison. Your dragon might very likely have some GG DNA, as AHBD already suggested.

Many home based businesses rely on Facebook pages. Mine and my husband's flooring installation company only has a Facebook page. I don't see anything wrong with them not having an official website.

 

[Gail]

I didn't see anything that bad either. Baby cages aren't crowded and most look well fed. As far as them being just grey babies, GG where bred for size not color. My first dragon was part GG and he was very plain.