Hello Amanda ..... I have German Shepherds for nearly 20 yrs now and I'd never taped my puppies' ears . I never had  this ears problem no matter how big or thick of the ears. I totally agree with you that...I didn't want a line of dogs that had to have their ears taped. In my opinion , food and exercises are the most important parts effected the the puppies developement physically.

I feed all my GSD BARF from their weaning , some even from their first meal other tham their mom's milk . I think BARF is best balanced food for the carnivores. When the pupies were grown up enough to play biting or pulling each other , I would watch closely when they play and never let the ear-pulling game happen.  If possible I would seperate them when out of my eyes since the ears and tails are most easy to be pulled than any other parts of the body and sometimes the sharpness of the puppies' tiny fangs might cut right through the point that might also cause floppy ears.

I also play a lot with them using rubber toy with beeb sound which will alert the puppies' attention . You can see when the puppies heard the beeb sound , their ears will always come up ..... that I call ears- exercise .

And last thing here is... do not pat on top of the puppies' head until the ears are fully erected . Only pet them at the sides of the heads , under the ears set , never on top of the head.

I can see that Parsley droppy ear is fully overloaded with very bushy hair which is very beautiful to look at , but you have to work harder for his ear- exercise .

Picture of 2 months old pup focus at his toy.

Good Luck,

The size and thickness of ear leather almost also depend on certain line - characteristic as for my experience of GSD breed. Most of long haired GSDs  have larger bone - structures , thicker ear leather and bigger ear size than the short or normal haired ones. 

Long haired puppy...