Butternut Box Review – An In Depth Look

Any experienced dog owner is well aware of the challenges of having to pick the right dog food. Every brand claims to use the freshest produce and avoid grain fillers, and yet, most of them don’t.

At the same time, no one can spend an hour in the kitchen every day, prepping a separate dish for the pets. So how do you make sure that your precious pooch actually gets the food that he needs?

Simple: The Butternut Box. This Butternut Box Review will tell you all you need to know about getting fresh and healthy meals for your dog.

Butternut Box Review – A Quick Overview

The Butternut Box is a personalized meal-prep and delivery service, designed specially for dogs. They’re actually the UK’s first homemade food supply company for dogs. They have a very charming history, because the company grew out of one pair’s frustration with their adopted rescue Staffie, who was (at the time) the gassiest dog alive. Their own personal experience with trying to find a healthy, all round food for their dog gave rise to this home cooked dog meal delivery service.

 Like most meal-in-box delivery services, it offers a range of options you can choose from. Unlike other delivery services though, it’s intended for your dog – and your dog does the choosing.

One of the biggest frustrations can be finding a dog food that your dog actually eats without fuss. This gets doubly aggravating, when products that claim to have a certain product on the label actually only use that flavour or an additive to that effect. So you buy something that your dog likes.. But obviously, he doesn’t like it.

The Butternut Box flicks all of these issues off the table right from the start. It creates a fully customized meal plan for your dog, taking your dog’s favorite foods into account.

But it’s not just a bag of treats. It incorporates healthy ingredients along with your dog’s preferences, and customises the whole meal to fit your dog’s requirements. The meal is made correctly adjusted for the your dog’s

• Gender
• Age
• Size
• whether your dog is spayed or not
• Breed (including mixed breeds)
• Metabolism, and
• Any health issues he may have.

All these factors are taken into account, before the next steps kick in.

Ingredients on the Menu

The first round of the meal selection takes an in depth look into what your dog would like better. Dry food, or wet food? Does he prefer crunchy store bought treats, or like kitchen scraps and home cooked food? Does he like raw meat, or will he turn his nose up at uncooked food?

For dog owners with finicky dogs, or growing pups, the decision making can be exhausting. Especially since the minute you think you’ve found the right mix, your dog changes his mind, because of another ingredient in the food.

With Butternut Box, you choose from a base of the following meats:

Beef It Up: Butternut Box offers a beef base of a hefty 60% portion of freshly prepared beef, including beef mince, trim, heart, and liver to boost the vitamin and mineral punch.

Chow Down Chicken: The Butternut Box with chicken makes for a lean, low-fat serving that is straight up 60% chicken, grown and sourced in the UK. The chicken version also has added chicken liver, to give it an extra flavour kick, as well as to add microminerals and vitamins to the meal.

Gobble Gobble Turkey: The Butternut Box with turkey is an ideal, low fat option for dogs that need to watch their meal sizes, with a lean cut 60% turkey portion. The turkey variant is high protein, low fat, and seasoned to make it irresistible to pooches.

Wham Bam Lamb: the Butternut Box with lamb is practically a delicacy, with a well rounded meal made with freshly prepared lamb, containing mince, trim, and added heart and liver, for a vitamin boost. It makes for a rich, hearty base, and ideal for a filling meal.

A Tour of the Meal Preparation

With these four meal categories, the base of the meal is decided. But now comes the fun part- meal preparation.

All ingredients used in the Butternut Box meals for dogs are actually fit for human consumption – literally. This guarantees a much higher quality of ingredients, than the baseline standard usually used in making dog food commercially.

It also means that the meat is clean, disease and chemical free, as well as free of preservatives, and with actual fresh meat, not just freeze-dried inedible bits, that most commercial companies use. There is a reason that fishmeal is not a meal in itself!

Butternut Box meals combine locally grown and sourced meat with a variety of herbs, as well as added vegetables, that add roughage, good carbohydrates, and added vitamins. Each meal combines the best of the individual ingredients.

The meal combinations combine meat with carrots, sweet potato, green lentils, red split lentils, peas, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, green beans, and seasonal vegetables. These vegetables bring fibre, complex carbohydrates, vegetable protein, and healthy fats into the mix.

Roughage from the vegetable components makes sure that your dog can ‘go’ like clockwork. Getting enough fibre is one of the best ways to ensure that your dog has fewer gastrointestinal problems. It also helps him avoid developing intestinal issues with age, and has been proved to deter cancers of the GI tract.

Peas, lentils, and red split lentils help your dog get extra vegetable protein. This ensures that he receives all the essential amino acids that are required for muscle growth, repair, and healthy tissue regeneration. This is as important for young, growing pups, as it is for older dogs who are likelier to develop degenerative conditions with age.

But it’s not a mix of bland, boiled healthy food, no. the Butternut box meals make every meal a mix of perfectly seasoned dishes, with herbs like parsley, thyme, rosemary, oregano, etc. as well as spices like turmeric, doggy safe spices.

The whole meal is cooked in healthy fats, with included organic ground flaxseed and cold pressed organic linseed oil in the meals, to add an extra dose of heart healthy omega 3 and 6 fatty acids.

The gourmet experience doesn’t even end there. Butternut box meals are not cooked into an unrecognisable mush, like wet foods often are. The Butternut box meal combinations are only gently cooked, enough to make sure that everything has been sufficiently cooked through, but retains its original flavour and texture.

Special Delivery

One would think that such farm to table meals would be impossible to provide on a daily basis. And daily deliveries aren’t reasonable either, given our busy and ever changing daily schedules.

Which is why, with Butternut Boxes, you can order the meal bags to freeze for up to a week at a time. Freshly cooked food is frozen into individual serving bags. Each of these servings is tailor-made to your dog’s personal, individual requirements.

These servings are then frozen and delivered to your doorstep, ready to be fed. The meals are individually wrapped, and keep for up to a week that way. Each pouch can be served as a single serving, or even divided into multiple meals, depending on how much food you need to feed your dog every day. It’s that simple.

You simply need to heat them up a little bit before serving them to your pooch. Warm meals every time, and you have to put no more effort into it than pressing ‘start’ on the microwave!

You don’t have to be home to pick the boxes. You can order the number and quantity of meals that your dog would need. These get delivered to your home. If you’re not at home, the courier will text you and you can tell them where to leave the box. The meals will stay frozen and insulated safely in their container till you get home and put them away!

Depending on the size of your dog and their meal’s size, you can order and store their food for two, three, four weeks in advance and have it ready in your freezer.

It’s an insanely convenient scheme. You don’t have to stay fixed on a certain size or meal plan either. You can change them up online to accommodate for dogs who are gaining or losing weight, and need more or less food depending on their needed goal weight.

And, since the meals are perfectly proportioned and designed to be completely balanced, no food goes to waste – or to the waist!

Price Ranges

Such a tailor-made, gourmet doggy food service sounds like it would be pricey – but it isn’t! Prices for food and delivery for Butternut boxes are very well within normal prices for processed food, on an average.

For example, prices for food for a small dog start around £1.60 for a day, which is ridiculously reasonably priced.  The dog food servings come in various sizes, like 100g, 125g, 200g, 300g, etc. which obviously changes the total price of the order.  A subscription will put you back by proportionately the same amount, with small dog subscriptions starting at £22.40 per month.

The first subscription also gets 15% off, which doesn’t hurt, wink wink. But regardless of how you see it, £2.14 for a 400g pouch is a very low price. In fact, for small to medium sized dogs, Butternut boxes are practically the cheapest wet food option out there. And when you take the emphasis they put on healthy food for dogs into consideration, the price is really worth it.

General Consensus: What Are Other People Saying?

Butternut boxes have overwhelmingly positive reviews from users. They are one of the very few dog food brands that have exclusively five star reviews on subscription websites. And it’s not hard to see why.

Dogs who can’t or won’t eat food out of tins, or have sensitive digestive systems, adapt very quickly to Butternut box meals. Their recipes are painstakingly tailored to be non-irritant, hypoallergenic, and provide full bodied nutrition to every dog.

In fact, in a lot of ways, the recipes go above and beyond the usual scope of ingredient sourcing to ensure truly healthy meals for dogs. Like using organic cold pressed linseed oil, for example, that is a very vitamin E rich source, and contributes to dogs having healthy skin, fur, and a fluffy, shiny coat and strong nails.

The same goes for all the added vitamin complexes. Each and every possible nutritional requirement, from macronutrient to micronutrient, is completely taken into account. Which makes senses, too, given how closely the founders worked with vets while formulating the recipes for dogs. Each recipe – and each meal- is fully vet approved.

Not only the company’s home website, but also most online ordering platforms are chock full of happy customers detailing how their dogs love their Butternut box meals. Some pet owners use the Butternut box meals for all their pets’ mealtimes, while others use them in rotation with dry food and kibble. But all of them are united on how well the dogs do with their home cooked and delivered meals.

Pros:

• Dogs get a well rounded meal at each mealtime, with the perfect balance of nutrients individually decided and cooked for each dog.
• All nutrient groups are covered, with added microminerals, vitamins, and vitamin absorption aids like healthy flaxseed and linseed oils.
• Vet approved and hypoallergenic formulations that ensure each dog gets exactly what he needs- and wants!
• 1-4 weeks’ supply can be ordered in advance. Delivery is very reasonably priced (and free, in certain areas).
• Each meal is cooked at the ideal temperature that retains the nutritional value of the food (no destruction of temperature sensitive nutrients), while also making sure that the food is cooked through.
• Tailor recipes available for dogs who have food sensitivities, or conditions like diabetes, pancreatitis, etc.
• The Butternut box meal packages are easy to store, divide, and serve – and are chowed down in no time!
• Very reasonably priced.

Cons

• Each serving has to be served. That is to say, automatic food dispensers can’t be used with this wet food.
• Price might be a consideration if you have multiple large dogs, and are considering feeding them Butternut box meals exclusively.
• Certain diseases in dogs require meal plans that are not available at Butternut box- yet. But the company can be contacted for queries about this.

Butternut Box Review – Final Thoughts  

Butternut Box meals deliver their promise of ‘putting the food back in dog food’. These are meals made with such high quality ingredients, and with such tantalizing recipes, that a dog owner could literally eat a spoonful from his dog’s bowl (but we’re not sure how their dog would feel about that).

The effort, time, research, and knowledge invested by the owners into the Butternut box meals really shows, too. It’s hard to find any pet owner who has not had great experiences with their dog food. Dogs who struggle with grain based commercial foods simply flourish with the Butternut box’s meat based, plant and herb enriched combinations. And it’s hardly surprising, too. Butternut boxes offer authentic home cooked meals made specially for your beloved dog, delivered to your doorstep.