Our Story


Our passion, commitment and expertise over the generations has led us to where we are now – a leading UK manufacturer catering for the country’s most popular animals – dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas, hamsters, gerbils, rats and ferrets.
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Burgess through the centuries

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Our strong family values and traditions are core to the Burgess story.

Burgess is an independent family run business based in Thornton-le-Dale. We are one of the UK’s leading animal food manufacturers, catering for the country’s top nine most popular animals including dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas, hamsters, gerbils, rats and ferrets.

For generations, Burgess has produced the finest quality foods for people and animals.

Starting out as flour millers in the 17th century in North Yorkshire, the Burgess family moved into producing wholesome farm animal feeds in the early 1960’s initially at Victory Mill in Thornton-le-Dale on the edge of the North York Moors National Park. In the 1980’s we focussed on small animal food at Cherry Tree Mill in East Yorkshire. Using the expertise and experience built over the centuries, we produce high quality, award winning foods and have launched many innovations including the UK’s first single component nugget for rabbits and the world’s first food specifically formulated for indoor rabbits.

We are dedicated to improving the health and welfare of animals through research and education. We invest in activities such as Rabbit Awareness Week to promote rabbit welfare and educational webinars to enable vets to keep up to date with the latest developments in small animal care. This dedication led Burgess Pet Care to work with the University of Edinburgh on a ground breaking study which highlighted the risks to rabbits’ health associated with muesli style diets and selective feeding.

Today our head office is still in Victory Mill, almost 100 years after we first moved there, and we are still producing small animal food at Cherry Tree Mill. The history of innovation continues with our in-house vet, Dr. Suzanne Moyes. Dr Moyes uses her nutritional expertise to enable us to nurture happy, healthy dogs, cats and small animals. Having developed strong working relationships with the local agricultural communities over the years we use locally sourced ingredients wherever possible and often have deliveries by tractor.

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The health and happiness of our animals is our number one goal and our expert knowledge in animal nutrition helps us achieve this. We believe in responsible ownership, supporting welfare and education as well as making healthy, nutritious and tasty animal food.

THE BURGESS TEAM

Discover more of Burgess!


Shop our products

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Read our Pet Talk

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View our Pet Care guides

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