AbleThrive Junior: Lamb and Beef review

All nine recipes are in our Outstanding band, and not one of them stands apart from the rest. That band word means something particular in this category: raw is the hardest company we score, and a typical raw food for growing dogs holds the same word. What these nine achieve is standing level with an exceptional field. Protein and processing and value both read Outstanding on every recipe, with transparency Excellent throughout and nutritional balance Outstanding on most of the nine.

Ingredients, as declared: Beef 55% (including liver), lamb 25% (including bone), carrot, butternut squash, broccoli, kale, flaxseed meal, kelp meal, cod liver oil, wheatgerm oil, cranberries, blueberries, turmeric, spirulina powder, green lipped mussel powder, chicory root powder, spinach powder, bilberry powder, gingko biloba powder.

Read one label and you have largely read all nine. Animals first. The vegetables run carrot, then butternut squash and broccoli and kale. Flaxseed meal, kelp meal, cod liver oil and wheatgerm oil follow, and cranberries and blueberries and a botanical pinch finish the label. The animals change; the frame does not.

What varies quietly between recipes is which animal is carrying what. In most of the nine the bone comes from one species and the liver or offal from another, which is why the labels bother to say so in brackets. Eight of the nine declare 80% animal in total, and the Beef and Lamb with Duck goes a shade further than that.

Ground bone is the calcium here, because there is no mineral premix on any of these labels. Able's stated approach is that whole ingredients carry the micronutrition: kelp for iodine, wheatgerm oil for vitamin E, cod liver oil for vitamin D, and the B vitamins arriving with the liver in the recipe. That is a coherent way to build a raw food, and the offal in every recipe is what makes it credible, though it does leave you without printed doses to check.

Because cod liver oil is on every label, fish is in every recipe. It is there for vitamin D and for omega 3 fats, and most dogs never notice it. The exception is a household keeping fish out on purpose, and this is the range where that plan runs out of options.

The tail end of each label is small by design. Cranberries and blueberries sit near the back, and behind them come turmeric, spirulina, green lipped mussel powder, chicory root, spinach, bilberry and gingko biloba. Their position on the list is the tell: these are finishing touches, and green lipped mussel in particular is a nod towards joint care.

The carbohydrate line on every label is an estimate reached by difference, not a measurement, and with no starch ingredient in sight it absorbs whatever the analysis left over. Most of the nine land low. Where one reads high, the ingredients list is what tells you what is in the bowl.

Beef at 55% supplies the liver and lamb at 25% supplies the bone. When poultry is off the table, this is the red meat pick. The declared ash of 1.1% of dry matter is strikingly low for a recipe with that much bone-in lamb in it. Energy reads 181 kcal per 100g.

The whole range is £7.25 a kilo. It is sold in multipack boxes rather than singles, from 150g portions boxed in 28 up to 500g portions boxed in 10, with box weights of roughly 4kg to 5kg.

A growing dog's daily amount rises with the dog and then eases back, so no single number covers the year. For a 10kg dog, the feeding estimate in that first year runs 500g to 600g a day, and 200g to 300g once the same dog is grown.