For those of you dropping in for your first newsletter, welcome, to those of you who regularly open these up and read them, welcome back.

It’s 2016, fast approaching 2017, and when I reflect back it’s been an extremely quick quarter of a century to get to this point - this point being I’m 25 years in the business and still loving it. By profession I’m a packer, producer and purveyor of pet protein but most people just call me Dave.

Anyhooo, we attended the Pet and Animal Expo in Auckland the other weekend and after all this time there are still a lot of the same faces in the pet world that have been there for decades, and then there are a whole lot of new pet owners. The common theme of everyone who visited our stand is: they all love their pets, care about what they feed them and there is a genuine interest in people getting back to natural pet foods. The common theme from those coming into the category is that raw feeding's something new and cutting edge - the reality: we have been producing and advocating raw pet food for almost 50 years.

The pet food industry has changed significantly in my 25 years to a point where you can now buy a dog food for a three-legged Great Dane Chihuahua cross with a hair lip, sensitive stomach and inflammatory toe nail disorder. Whilst I’m not knocking this I do see it has gone a little too far one way, and now the pendulum is swinging back to more simple options. Life goes in cycles they say. On that note, we stumbled across a TED Talk that is of a similar vein - well worth the watch so sometime when you have a quarter hour free, brew a cuppa, fire up the old intergoogle and have a wee watch (click here to check it out). Thanks for reading.

We want to say "Happy Birthday!" to your pets when it is their special day, and send them a little birthday treat. Pop your pets in our database by clicking on the orange button below, and when their birthdays roll around we will send you an email with a Jimbo's Pet Food coupon inside to spoil them with.

If you also update your details to tell us what kind of pets you have and which region of the country you are in, you will go in the draw to win a Jimbo's Pet Food merchandise pack worth over $40!