Barkin Bistro Raw 80:10:10: Beef review

Four of these minces reach our Outstanding band and the Turkey lands a step below in Excellent. The typical raw food stands in that same Outstanding band, so these minces are keeping the best company there is: raw is far and away the strongest field on our scoring. Named cuts of one animal, with the bone and organ shares written out, earn Outstanding readings for protein and processing and for nutritional balance across all five. Transparency is Excellent or better on every recipe but the Turkey.

Ingredients, as declared: 80% Beef Meat (Ox Heart, Ox Lung, Ox Tripe, Ox Lips, Ox Tongue), 10% Offal (Liver, Kidney, Pancreas, Spleen), 10% Bone

The construction is the same idea five times: roughly four fifths muscle meat, a tenth organs, a tenth bone. What varies is how honestly each label reaches those numbers. The Beef and the Venison state the split outright, and the Turkey names the bone as neck and the offal as liver. The Lamb builds it from 50% heart, 20% lung and 20% ribs, while the Pork reaches 100% without listing any bone at all.

The muscle share is far more interesting than a plain mince would be. Ox heart, lung, tripe, lips and tongue in the Beef, lamb heart and lung, pork tongue and neck. These are the working cuts a dog would meet in the wild, a long way from the fillet a human would buy. Tripe in particular sits well with a delicate stomach, and few dogs turn it down.

Liver, kidney, pancreas and spleen carry the micronutrition. Liver is the richest of them, dense in vitamin A, B12, copper and iron, and the reason a 10% organ share matters so much on a label that adds nothing else. With no vitamin or mineral pack declared anywhere in the range, the organ share is doing that job on its own, which is exactly how prey model raw is meant to work.

Bone is where the calcium comes from, and the Lamb is the recipe that shows its working. It declares calcium at 1.09% of dry matter, a level that suits a large breed puppy as well as an adult. The other labels leave the calcium figure unprinted, so a dog fed a single one of these for life is a fair reason to ask the maker for the numbers behind the bone share.

The analyses read like meat and nothing else, with protein converting to between 51.0% and 68.7% of dry matter and fat between 15.5% and 56.1%. Where a carbohydrate estimate appears, as with 20.5% of dry matter on the Venison, it is an artefact of estimating by difference. No plant ingredient appears on any of these labels, so there is no starch to point at.

The widest set of cuts in the range, with ox heart, lung, tripe, lips and tongue making up the 80%, then liver, kidney, pancreas and spleen as the offal and 10% bone. It is the most energy dense of the five at 165 kcal per 100g, so portions run smallest here and a working dog will do well on it.

Per kilo, the Pork is £5.60, the Beef £5.80, the Venison £6.63, and the Lamb and Turkey are both £6.99. The Beef, Lamb and Pork come in 400g and 1kg packs, while the Turkey and Venison are sold in 1kg.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate, using 110 × bodyweight^0.75. Daily feeding then runs between 509 grams of the Beef, at £2.95, and 659 grams of the Pork, at £3.69. The richer the mince, the smaller the portion, so the Beef feeds lightest of the five.