Burgess Excel Herby Hearts Fruity Treats – 60g

Burgess Excel Nature Snacks Fruity Feasts – 60g

These are Burgess Excel Nature Snacks Fruity Feasts: small baked pieces built on grass at 35%, with fresh banana and fresh blueberry at 4% each and a little dried apple, carrot and turmeric behind them. The pack barcode identifies the fruit recipe rather than Burgess’s herb version, which is a separate product sold as Excel Herby Hearts.

They are a treat, and Burgess treat them as one. Crude oils and fats run to 12%, against 2.4% in their compressed hay bars, and Burgess set a firm limit of no more than one per day. Fed to that limit they are a useful reward; fed freely they simply displace the hay a rabbit or guinea pig actually needs.

Performance & Benefits

• Grass at 35%, the largest single ingredient in the recipe.
• Fresh banana at 4% and fresh blueberry at 4%, with dried apple at 1%.
• No added sugar — a claim Burgess make on the pack.
• Crude fibre 15% and crude protein 16%.
• Baked and firm enough to hand-feed one at a time.
• Gram flour, pea flour, rapeseed oil, dried carrot, lignocellulose and turmeric make up the remainder.

Suitable For

• All rabbits and guinea pigs — the species Burgess name.
• Hand-feeding, and rewarding an animal through handling or a health check.
• Owners who want a fruit treat where the sugar comes from the fruit rather than from added sugar.
• Rabbits and guinea pigs already eating plenty of hay.
• An animal that is overweight or off its hay should not be having these — the Burgess Excel Forage & Feast hay bars are the far leaner treat.

Feeding

• Burgess specify no more than one treat per day.
• Feed by hand rather than leaving them in the bowl, which makes the limit easy to keep to.
• Give alongside unlimited feeding hay, a small measured portion of Excel nuggets, leafy greens and fresh water.
• Count them within the day’s food, not on top of it, for an animal watching its weight.

Composition & Analysis

• Composition: grass (35%), gram flour, rapeseed oil, pea flour, fresh banana (4%), fresh blueberry (4%), dried apple (1%), dried carrot, lignocellulose, turmeric.
• Analytical constituents: crude protein 16%, crude oils and fats 12%, crude fibre 15%, crude ash 4%.
• Supplied as a 60g pack.
• Burgess publish no calorie figure and no piece count for this pack, so neither is stated here.

Care & Caution

• Burgess limit these to one per day. At 12% crude oils and fats they are roughly five times as rich as the hay-based Forage & Feast bars, and an animal filled up on treats stops eating the long fibre that keeps its gut moving and its teeth worn down.
• Introduce any new treat singly and watch the droppings. A rabbit whose appetite or droppings fall away needs veterinary attention quickly — gut stasis moves fast.