REVIEW - Mr Johnsons Everyday Advance Rabbit

This is the second of my Mr Johnsons Everyday Advance food reviews. Today I'm reviewing the rabbit feed, which Mr Johnsons kindly sent me. The rabbits much obliged!

Mr Johnson's Everyday Advance Rabbit

The packaging looks attractively modern with its simple and clean purple and white scheme featuring a silhouette image of a rabbit. The labelling is clear with easy to see bullet pointed benefits of feeding the food. Information on the pack reverse is concise but very technical with too much printed word to read through. Its almost scientific approach makes it less pet owner friendly and more targeted toward the breeders market.

The product is a little small formed, bite sized nugget. The little nuggets have a course texture and are light fawn in colour. They smell sweetly of wheat with a slight aniseed scent.

Nuggets close up

The ingredients consist of: Wheatfeed, oatfeed, alfalfa, wheat, sunflower extract, ligno-cellulose, dried carrot, herbs, calcium carbonate, sodium chloride, biomos, Yucca schidigera extract and vitamins and minerals.

Fibre – 17%, Protein - 12%

The availability of Mr Johnsons is not wide but can be purchased conveniently from Wilkinsons.

The price for 1.5kg is £3.49. Competitively priced with leading brands, even slightly dearer against similar prices for 2kg.

The taste test. I laid out a scoop of Mr Johnsons next to the rabbits' current feed and they were instantly interested. Lucy, who is a very sensitive and picky eater, greedily ate the pellets on production of them. During playtime Lucy even actively tried to steal the nuggets and opened up a corner of the pack to eat them!

In my opinion Mr Johnsons for rabbits is a good quality nugget food with a strong appeal to even the pickiest of bunnies. The nuggets are compacted and stay in their form without excessive breaking and crumbling avoiding waste. I'm more than happy that one of our pickiest eaters does actually enjoy Mr Johnsons, and being a sufferer of malocclusion, the hard crunchy nuggets are good exercise for Lucy's teeth. These nuggets have a good recipe behind them and sound nutrition evidence. My only criticism would be the high price for a smaller than average pack size. If the pack was made a kg more, say 2.5kg for the same price, or brought down in price circa £2.99, then I would find it more competitive for the market. 4/5

REVIEW - Mr Johnsons Everyday Advance Guinea Pig

Mr Johnsons very generously provided my panel of furry testers two 10kg sacks of their Everyday Advance feed in Guinea Pig and Rabbit varieties, so we've had plenty time to get to know the product. This is my personal review.

Mr Johnson's Everyday Advance Guinea Pig

The packaging looks attractively modern with its simple and clean purple and white scheme featuring a silhouette image of a guinea pig. The labelling is clear with easy to see bullet pointed benefits of feeding the food. Information on the pack reverse is concise but very technical with too much printed word to read through. Its almost scientific approach makes it less pet owner friendly and more targeted toward the breeders market or the more serious keeper.

The product is a slight banana shaped nugget in a pale fawn colour. The nuggets feel light and course in texture and tightly compressed with visible ground shards of grass. They smell appetisingly sweet and wheaty.

The ingredients are: Wheatfeed, barley, alfalfa, sunflower extract, treated straw, soya extract, calcium carbonate, dried carrot, herbs, lysine, biomos plus vitamins and minerals.

Fibre – 15%, Protein – 17%, Vitamin C – 490mg/kg

The availability of Mr Johnsons isn't as wide as some other foods and isn't stocked in high street pet shop leader Pets at Home. You can however purchase it from Wilkinsons which is a convenient shop for many people and it's reasonably priced too.

The price for 1.5kg is £3.49. Quite reasonable compared to others that are dearer.

The taste test. I laid out a scoop of Mr Johnson's and Timmy's usual nugget food on a sheet of paper. Timmy was attracted immediately to Mr Johnsons, bypassing his usual feed and keenly tucked into them. This can only mean the pellets have an appealing smell and tasty flavour to guinea pigs! Listening to Timmy eating each pellet, the Mr Johnsons sounded crunchy with a harder bite than usual, and that can only be good for dental health.

In my opinion Mr Johnsons is a serious contender in the nuggeted food market. I've successfully been able to move the guinea pigs over onto these nuggets without hard work at all. The gradual changeover was accepted by all the furries and they continue to clear their bowels of nuggets. I have found the nuggets keep the shape well and barely crumble in storage and in the feeding bowl which is great economy-wise as there's minimal waste. The price is reasonable too, and I can easily purchase it from my local Wilkinsons in town. One negative is I have noticed the piggies don't seem as excited at food time anymore in comparison to when they were fed their previous food. My dislikes are the slightly lower fibre content than my piggies previous food, and also that the vitamin C content is extremely low, at over half the amount found in competitors brands. 3/5

Mr Johnsons Feed Review - coming soon!

As an ongoing effort to show nuggeted food is the healthier choice over muesli mix, I'm going to be doing some reviews on the top nugget foods out there on the market. It can be quite a daunting task to decide which food brand is best for your guinea pigs and rabbits - and your purse - so I'm hoping to break down that barrier at least a little bit, and help make the job a little easier.

A few months ago I made a little video for Rabbit Awareness Week promoting nugget food, and you can watch it here: RAW video It's not the best quality video but it was something I quickly knocked up with one of my lot, Lucy the rabbit.

The company behind the brand Mr Johnsons have very generously provided me with two large bags of their Everyday Advance, both rabbit and guinea pig formats.

(Remember, if you have both guinea pigs and rabbits that piggies can not synthesise vitamin C and require their own feed that contains this. This is why 'rabbit and guinea pig food' simply does not exist, or rather shouldn't if it does!)

My piggies and buns will be testing the food themselves to see how palatable the pellets are, if they are indeed tempting and tasty, and I will be comparing the ingredients and nutrition content against other leading pellets and nuggets. My animals currently very happily eat original flavour Burgess Excel Tasty Nuggets so this will be a nice challenge to see and compare.

Becky

Welcome to Whiskers in a Dream!

This is a new journal that I'm dedicating to the world of guinea pigs and rabbits as a spin off from a website I ran called Cavy Capers. CavyCapers.com was born in 2001 and lived online until this year, 2011, and to mark it's anniversary I unconventionally decided to close it down and move on to the next chapter in this constantly evolving digital age. Blogging has recently become a big thing in social media and is a rapidly growing area for quick and up to date information which is why I feel this is the best way to continue the education of the proper care of guinea pigs - and now including rabbits. I would also like to talk about my own clan of piggies and buns too, so Whiskers in a Dream will be a nice little social place to hang out and celebrate all that's great about these furries!

To make you aware, I also currently run a Facebook page called 'Campaign to ban guinea pig and rabbit muesli' which is a cause I personally feel strongly about. I am getting a lot of positive feedback from many rescues and guinea pig and rabbit owners who agree with my thinking, that feeding these animals the muesli mix type feeds are a poor dietary choice as opposed to the extruded pelleted or nugget food, but there are still lots of people out there who don't quite understand the meaning behind the page. It is simply to re-educate owners and provide evidence that muesli is not a healthy feed. It encourages selective feeding which means the guinea pig or rabbit will pick out what it likes and gives it the option to leave what it doesn't like. This can lead to malnutrition because all necessary nutrients in the food are not eaten. Also many of these feeds contain contain colours and are very sugary. Another reason why they are not a good feed is their low fibre content, which is important for a normally functioning gut. This is the page to be to discuss this cause and I urge you to check it out and join in if you haven't yet.

Becky