Henley Raw Duo 80-10-10: Rabbit and Ox review

Every recipe in the range sits in our Outstanding band, and they finish near enough together that ranking them misses the point. Raw is worth keeping in mind while you read that. No field we score is stronger, and the middle of it reaches our Outstanding band. Protein and processing and nutritional balance read Outstanding on almost every tray. Standing level with that mark says a great deal about the company these trays keep, and as much again about the labels themselves. Transparency reads Outstanding throughout, the reward for a label that puts a percentage against every line it prints.

Ingredients, as declared: Ox 60%, Rabbit 20%, Rabbit Bone 10%, Ox Offal 10%

The pattern never changes. Two animals in every tray, meat and bone and offal in roughly the classic proportions, a percentage against every line, and no plant matter at all. What moves between trays is which two animals turn up and how much of the tray is tripe, and Henley is unusually straightforward about both.

Tripe is the range's calling card. Stomach lining from a grazing animal, it is rich in protein, easy on the gut and famously appealing to a dog who normally turns its nose up at plainer meat. Trays led by tripe tend to run lighter on energy, so they feed in noticeably bigger portions than the muscle-led ones, which is the practical thing to know when you swap between them.

Bone arrives as chicken, duck, turkey or rabbit bone at 10% and carries the calcium, since no mineral is added anywhere. Crude ash converts to between 3.4% and 8.4% of dry matter across the range, a wide spread for recipes built to one pattern, and no calcium percentage is printed on a single label. If your dog is sensitive to a bonier bowl, that spread is worth reading tray by tray.

Most trays name offal as a group and leave the individual organs unsaid. The Lamb and Chicken, the Ox and Turkey and the Ox Tripe and Duck all single liver out by name. Liver is where much of the fat soluble vitamin content of a raw diet actually lives. At the other end, the Pork and Chicken and the Pork and Duck carry no offal line at all, which is a genuine departure from the pattern the range is named for.

The analysis is meat-shaped throughout. Protein converts to between 46.4% and 57.5% of dry matter and fat to between 30.9% and 44.7%. Carbohydrate comes out at no more than 8.5% against a raw typical of 5.0%, and that is mostly an artefact of estimating by difference, not starch in the tray. Energy runs from 118 to 190 kcal per 100g, and all of it is estimated.

A couple of the labels do not add up to a clean hundred, and the Ox Tripe and Duck is the clearest case, printing more than the tray can hold. Read those percentages as the maker's intended ratios, and take the running order as the reliable part.

The only tray with rabbit on it, though ox leads at 60% with rabbit at 20%, rabbit bone at 10% and ox offal at 10% behind. In a British bowl, rabbit is genuinely uncommon. Where a dog has run out of new animals to try, this tray is worth a look.

Per kilo, the four trays named for tripe are £4.90. The Ox and Chicken, the Ox and Duck, the Pork and Chicken and the Pork and Duck are £5.80, while the Lamb and Chicken and the Lamb and Turkey are £6.00. The Lamb and Duck is £6.50, the Ox and Turkey is £7.20, and the Rabbit and Ox is £7.70. Each recipe is packed in a 500 g tray that is recyclable and resealable.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs roughly 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), which puts a day between £2.52 and £4.15 depending on the tray. Energy density moves that figure more than the per kilo one does, because the lighter tripe trays feed in much larger portions.