Benyfit Natural Joint Support review

This one earns our Outstanding band, our highest, and it does so in the most competitive category we cover, where the middle of the raw field already sits on that same word. Named meat with a percentage against it, a proper organ share and a plant side of three vegetables are what get it there, and protein and processing, nutritional balance and transparency all read Outstanding. The joint pair does not lift that reading, since our scoring looks at the food rather than the supplement, but it is a good reason to pick this recipe over a plain turkey one.

Ingredients, as declared: 65% Free Range Turkey with Bone, 5% Ox Liver, 5% Ox Heart, 5% Ox Kidney, 9% Carrot, 8% Parsnip, 3% Broccoli, <1% Glucosamine, <1% Chondroitin M.S.M, Botanicals Including: Flaxseed Oil, Kelp, Turmeric, Celery Seeds, Alfalfa, Nettles, Psyllium Husk, Clivers & Wild Yam.

Free range turkey with bone at 65% is the backbone of the recipe, and that bone is what puts calcium at 1.54% of dry matter without a mineral premix anywhere on the label. Turkey is lean and easily digested, which suits a dog whose exercise has quietly dialled down.

The organ share is a real one: ox liver, heart and kidney at 5% each. Liver is the nutrient dense entry, carrying vitamin A and copper along with the B vitamins in quantity. Heart eats like muscle meat and brings taurine with it, and kidney rounds out the trace minerals. Between them they cover a lot of ground a premix would otherwise have to.

Glucosamine and chondroitin are both declared, each at under 1%, with MSM riding along on the chondroitin entry. Both occur naturally in cartilage and bone, so a bone-in raw mince brings a little of each anyway, and here they are added on top of that. The label gives you their presence and a ceiling. It does not give a milligram figure, and that matters if you have been given a target dose to hit. One further note: commercially made glucosamine usually comes from shellfish, which matters only in a household avoiding it.

The plant fifth is carrot at 9%, with parsnip at 8% and broccoli at 3%. There is no added panel here, so the rest of the micronutrition comes from a botanical blend of nettles, alfalfa, clivers, wild yam, turmeric, celery seeds, psyllium husk, kelp and flaxseed oil. Turmeric is the one owners tend to notice on a joint recipe, and at botanical level it is a flourish on top of the real work.

Protein converts to 40.3% of dry matter and fat to 30.8%, a well balanced raw reading, while ash lands at 18.5%, high even for a bone-in mince. Carbohydrate is estimated at 9.4% of dry matter, which the carrot and parsnip between them largely explain.

£6.35 a kilo. It comes in 500g and 1kg packs.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), which on this recipe is roughly 564 grams, or £3.58 a day. Benyfit's printed guide is leaner than that, at 200 to 300 grams for a 10kg dog and 400 to 600 grams for a 20kg one.