Butchers Succulent Recipes Foil: With Beef & Liver review

The lamb tray sits in our Excellent band, level there with the typical wet food, with the beef and the chicken just under it in our Good band. In a strong wet category, the gap here is one of detail: the liver and kidney are never named to a species, and the plant fibres could be anything fibrous. The meat itself is declared properly and the analysis is genuinely meat-led, which is why the range lands where it does and no lower. The lamb finishes a step ahead of the other two, so beyond that pick by your dog's preference.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 30.5%, Beef and Beef Broth 26%, Liver 8.5%, Salmon Oil, Plant Fibres, Vitamins & Minerals, Chicory Root, MOS.

Every tray here is chicken's show, whatever the front of the pack says. In the Beef & Liver tray, chicken at 30.5% edges out the beef and beef broth at 26%, and in the Lamb & Kidney tray, chicken at 33.5% leads the lamb at 26%. Only the Chicken & Liver tray, at 45% chicken and chicken broth, has its billing straight. None of this is unusual in wet food, but it does mean the flavour name tells you what is visiting, not what runs the kitchen.

The named meat entries add up to 65% of each recipe, and the analysis agrees. Protein converts to 47.2% of dry matter, and the carbohydrate estimate comes out at 10.0% of dry matter against the 15.8% typical for wet food. No cereal appears on the three labels, and nothing starchy stands in for one.

Salmon oil is the omega source across the range. It earns its keep for skin and coat. Fish is therefore in every tray, something to check for a dog kept off it.

Chicory root and MOS close each list, a prebiotic pairing for gut support that plenty of wet foods do not bother with. The added vitamins and trace elements arrive as one lumped entry on the ingredient list, but the additives panel itemises and doses them: vitamins A, D3 and E, then zinc, manganese and iodine.

The vaguer entries are the liver, the kidney and the plant fibres, none of which names a species or a source. For most dogs that is a shrug. For a strict elimination plan, it is the part of the label to weigh before you rely on it.

Chicken at 30.5% sits just ahead of the beef and beef broth at 26%, with liver at 8.5% behind them. Of the two red-meat flavours, this is the one that pairs its headline animal with liver rather than kidney.

£3.61 a kilo, in 150g foil trays sold in packs of 4, 12 and 24.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works to about 840 kcal a day, using 110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate. That is roughly 955 grams a day, or about £3.45.