Basil's Dog Food Basil's Superfood: Chicken review

Our Outstanding band covers all four chubs, and it covers the typical adult raw recipe too, which is the clearest measure of how strong this category is. Keeping four recipes at that height is what this range is quietly doing well: protein and processing, nutritional balance and value all read Outstanding throughout, and transparency reads Outstanding or Excellent depending on the recipe. They finish close together, so the animal and the richness matter far more than any ordering.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken Meat with carcass 79.5%, Beef Liver 5%, Beef Kidney 5%, Parsnip 5%, Carrot 3%, Barley grass, Chicory root powder, Kelp, Omega-3, Shiitake mushroom powder

Each chub leads with a named meat and then itemises the offal behind it, usually liver and kidney at 5% apiece. That is where the second animal comes in. The chicken chub takes its liver and kidney from beef, the lamb takes its kidney from beef, and the beef chub brings chicken carcass in at 20% to supply the bone. Not one of the four is a single-species recipe, whatever the name over the door suggests.

Barley grass is the entry that catches people out. It is the leaf of the barley plant rather than the grain, so it does not carry the proteins that make cereals awkward for sensitive dogs. It still registers as grain on an allergen index. No percentage is printed against it, which places it in the trace tail with the rest.

Chicory root powder is there for its inulin. That soluble fibre is food for the gut's own bacteria, and it tastes faintly sweet. Kelp is there for iodine and trace minerals, and shiitake mushroom powder rounds the tail off. At these inclusions they are seasoning on a meat recipe.

The omega 3 entry is left unnamed, which is the one real gap on an otherwise detailed label. The lamb and venison chubs also carry hempseed oil, so those two show an added fat source outright while the beef and chicken do not.

The analyses read like meat, as they should. Protein converts to between 50.3% and 64.9% of dry matter across the four, and fat to between 16.8% and 39.2%. The carbohydrate estimate never rises above 6.4%, and two of the four estimate at zero. The lamb's crude fibre reading of 11.5% of dry matter stands out as high for a recipe built this way.

Chicken meat with carcass at 79.5% is the largest single-animal share in the range, with beef liver and beef kidney at 5% each behind it. Protein converts to 55.4% of dry matter and fat to 24.5%, and it feeds at 133 kcal per 100g.

Per kilo, the chicken chub is £4.95, the beef £6.08, and the lamb and venison £6.52 each. All four come as 400g chubs, sold inside a build-your-own box of 16, 32 or 48.

On the standard maintenance estimate a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75), which puts a day's feeding between £3.12 and £4.94 depending on the recipe. The spread comes from both the rate per kilo and how densely each chub feeds.