Dibo Fresh Menu: Chicken review

Fresh food is the strongest field we score, and the typical fresh recipe sits in our Outstanding band. The Dibo salmon is up there in the same band, with the beef, the chicken and the lamb a step back in our Excellent band. Protein and processing and transparency read Outstanding on every dish. Nutritional balance is Good, and a step better again on the salmon, which is not a common sight even in this company.

What separates the four is very little. Salmon is the strongest of the four by a clear step. Beef, lamb and chicken bunch so tightly behind it that among those three you should be guided by whichever animal suits your dog, not by our ordering.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 67% (50% muscle meat, skin, liver), rice, 5.2% carrot, 5.2% courgette, 3.2% chicory (pulp), minerals, hemp oil, salmon oil. Dish Composition (as listed in the accordion): 67% Chicken, Rice, 5.2% Carrot, 5.2% Courgette, 3.2% Chicory pulp, Minerals, Hemp oil, Salmon oil

Fresh food is mostly water, and these labels say so: moisture runs from 57.1% on the chicken to 61.3% on the beef. That is why the headline percentages look modest next to a dry food's, and why the dry matter figures are the fairer read. On that basis protein lands between 26.8% and 35.0% and fat between 19.4% and 28.5%, which is a solidly meaty set of dishes.

The meat entries are unusually open. The beef block declares 67% beef and then tells you that 16% of it is muscle meat, with tripe, lung, kidney, liver and fat making up the balance. The chicken puts 50% of its 67% down as muscle meat with skin and liver behind. Organ meat carries a density of vitamins and minerals that lean muscle simply does not. Tripe in particular is prized by fresh feeders for how easily dogs digest it, and a list built like this one is a design choice.

Rice is the second entry in every dish and the only one on the meat side of the label without a figure. Its effect shows in the analysis: carbohydrate is estimated at 12.6% to 15.0% as fed, converting to between 31.3% and 34.9% of dry matter, noticeably above the 19.3% that is typical of fresh food. If you came to fresh feeding specifically to bring starch down, that is worth knowing. It is also why these blocks carry more energy per gram than the fresh average of 140 kcal per 100g.

The vegetable side is small, and each entry carries a name and a percentage. Carrot is at 5.2% or 6%, broccoli goes in the beef and lamb or courgette in the chicken and salmon, and chicory sits at 3.2% in every dish. The chicory is in for its inulin. Soluble fibre of that kind is what the gut's own bacteria live on. It also tastes faintly sweet, and that does the palatability no harm. Apple turns up on the beef, and blueberry and kelp seaweed only on the lamb.

Hemp oil is in all four blocks and salmon oil in three of them. The added mineral panel is dosed in print. Vitamin E runs at 133 mg or 167 mg per kilogram depending on the dish. Iron sits at 20 mg or 25 mg, zinc at 34 mg or 42 mg and selenium at 0.08 mg or 0.1 mg. Calcium is not among the declared figures, which is the one number to ask Dibo for if your dog has a particular reason to need it.

Chicken at 67% with a full 50% of the block put down as muscle meat, plus skin and liver. Courgette takes broccoli's place at 5.2%. This one carries the most starch of the four, with carbohydrate estimated at 15.0%, and at 185 kcal per 100g with 57.1% moisture it is the most concentrated block in the range.

£9.97 a kilo across all four dishes, sold as 0.4 kg blocks.

For a sense of scale, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats roughly 454 to 527 grams a day across the four dishes. Those figures work from about 840 kcal a day (the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75). That puts a day between £4.52 and £5.26, with the chicken at the lower end and the salmon at the upper, simply because the lighter the block the more of it goes in the bowl.