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

Food Trial Results Coming Soon!

Next year marks my 20 year anniversary since guinea pigs came into and took control of my life! Over this time I have taken in and acquired many guinea pigs (and now rabbits) and I've been faced with dozens of illnesses and conditions. I began an advice website in 2001 and I found one of the most common problems is dental disease and an obvious root of the cause has stemmed from poor diet; a lack of roughage of grasses and hay and a low quality dry feed. Since I have recognised this link I no longer feed my own animals a muesli mix which is something I feel strongly about and I launched a Facebook campaign page to highlight the problem. In an ideal world I would have muesli mix feeds banned but while this may seem far fetched to many, and while what is seen as top quality feed is expensive, I understand it's not a realistic dream (just yet). I do though intend to help with the re-education of proper feeding of our country's guinea pigs and rabbits and maybe then we'll need to deal with fewer cases of malocclusion.

In a bid to make the task of changing feed more understandable and less daunting for owners, I approached some of the leading names in pelleted form guinea pig and rabbit feed production to help me carry out a food review.

Stay tuned as over the course of the next few days I will be posting the results from my trials of Mr Johnsons Everyday Advance, Burgess Excel Tasty Nuggets and Supreme Science Selective rabbit and guinea pig food respectively.

Becky

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