More than a date on the bag – Why Burgess nuggets’ shelf life reflects premium quality

Carefully selected ingredients and the promise to freshness

When developing Burgess Excel nuggets, our priority has always been producing highly nutritious, great-tasting food that rabbits, guinea pigs and other small animals genuinely enjoy eating.

Every bag is carefully formulated using high-quality natural ingredients and a carefully balanced blend of vitamins and minerals to support small animals throughout every stage of life.

Our Burgess Excel nuggets are:

• High in beneficial fibre to support healthy digestion.
• Fortified with Vitamins A and C to help support a healthy immune system.
• Specific Indoor products are enriched with Vitamin D3 to support skin and bones.
• A source of Vitamin E, an important antioxidant that supports a healthy immune system.
• Formulated with essential minerals, including zinc to support skin and coat health, iron to support healthy blood function, and copper, which contributes to normal nerve function.
• Made with delicious natural ingredients, including herbs such as mint or oregano in selected recipes, creating the great taste that rabbits and guinea pigs love.

However, just like any premium food, these carefully selected nutrients naturally change over time.

Vitamins can gradually lose potency, natural flavours and aromas begin to diminish, and the overall eating experience can become less appealing. While these changes happen slowly, they are one of the reasons we have chosen a 15 to 18-month shelf life, depending on the nugget product.

Rather than extending the shelf life simply to achieve a longer date on the packaging, we choose a shelf life that allows us to be confident our products reach pets while they are still delivering the nutritional quality, freshness and excellent taste that Burgess Excel is known for.

The extrusion process and benefits for quality

Premium pet food isn’t just about the ingredients used but how it’s manufactured.

Burgess Excel nuggets are made by grinding and blending the ingredients in smaller batches before moving to the extrusion process. Through this, we combine carefully selected ingredients under controlled heat and pressure to produce a uniform, highly digestible nugget. This process allows vitamins, minerals and fibre to be evenly distributed throughout every nugget, ensuring rabbits and guinea pigs receive consistent nutrition with every nugget.

Compared to cold-pressed small animal feeds, the extrusion process allows for higher content of cooked starch which is a great source of fibre, benefiting the digestive system of herbivores.

The combination of premium ingredients, carefully balanced nutrition and our extrusion process helps produce nuggets that are not only highly palatable but also easy for small pets to eat and digest.

Why Palatability Matters

Pet owners can choose the best and most nutritious food for their pets, but they will only benefit from it if their pets actually want to eat it.

This is why palatability is a key focus throughout our product development. From carefully selected ingredients to our manufacturing process, every stage is designed to create nuggets that are appealing in both taste and texture.

Extensive feeding trials and decades of nutritional expertise give us the confidence to guarantee that small animals will enjoy their Burgess Excel nuggets when fed correctly.

Supporting Your Success

We understand that shelf life is an important commercial consideration, particularly when managing stock across international markets.

Our Burgess Excel nuggets’ shelf life has been carefully selected to strike the right balance between logistics and product quality, giving distributors confidence that they are supplying a premium product that maintains its nutritional integrity throughout its recommended life.

While our product development team is constantly looking at innovative solutions to stay competitive in the market, our commitment to quality and palatability remains unchanged.

By choosing freshness over unnecessarily extending shelf life, we're ensuring that the end customer—and most importantly, their pets—receive food that performs exactly as intended.

92% of UK vets recommend our Burgess Excel small animal range.

And, with a whole host of five-star reviews, Burgess Excel customers who have purchased our nuggets have told us: 

“Fantastic nuggets my bunny loves them and she is usually very fussy!”

“Great quality, my rabbits love them, recommended highly from our vet! Would not give nothing else.”

“Smell good, don’t break up too easily and they love them”

“Rabbit loves these”

“The brand my rabbits prefer so less waste. Burgess is a brand I trust.”

“My rabbits won’t eat anything else., and it’s the best quality you can buy”

“The rabbits love these pellets. I have been using them for a decade now and they are always good. The rabbits maintain good health on them.”

“I Don’t buy anything else, top quality and I have very picky rabbits!!”

“My bunnies love it and eat it all.”

“Rabbits love them and go nuts for when ever hear the bag”

“Great product that the rabbits really enjoy.”