Honey's Active Working Dog Food: Free Range British Chicken review

Both recipes sit in our Good band, two bands under the middle of the raw field, which is the toughest company we ask a food to keep. Both recipes read Outstanding for transparency, with protein and processing and nutritional balance landing between Good and Outstanding. The transparency mark is the one to notice: naming the farming system, the country and the cut is unusually forthcoming for raw, where a great many labels stop at the species. The label is not the problem here. The analysis is what holds the pair back. The Beef runs distinctly fat-heavy for a food a resting dog might be given.

Ingredients, as declared: Minced whole chicken including finely ground bone (67%). Minced carrot, cabbage, cauliflower, parsnip and other seasonal vegetables (33%).

Both recipes are built to the same shape: 67% minced meat with finely minced bone running all the way through it, and 33% minced vegetables. The Beef carries heart within the meat fraction, and the Chicken is minced whole rather than cut down, which is where its bone comes from. That is the entire recipe, front to back.

The vegetable third is what separates this from a pure meat, bone and offal raw food. Carrot, cabbage, cauliflower and parsnip are all named, with other seasonal vegetables permitted alongside them, so the mix moves with the growing year. Naming most of what goes in is a good deal more open than the bare vegetables entry many labels settle for. The seasonal clause does mean the tub is not quite identical from batch to batch.

Nothing is added on top. Honey's position is that a healthy dog should take everything it needs from its food, so there is no vitamin and mineral premix, no added oil and no botanical tail anywhere. Every bit of the micronutrition therefore comes out of the minced meat, its ground bone and the vegetables. Rotating between the two recipes is a sensible way to spread that.

The two read as very different foods once the water comes out. The Beef is fat-led, converting to 49.2% fat against 35.4% protein of dry matter, while the Chicken turns that around with 44.9% protein against 38.4% fat. Carbohydrate is close to nothing on both. Unusually for raw, the energy figures here are declared rather than estimated, which makes portioning a good deal less of a guess.

Crude ash converts to 12.2% of dry matter in the Beef and to 8.0% in the Chicken. That mineral load is the finely ground bone turning up in the analysis. No calcium percentage is printed on either recipe, so the bone content has to be read off the ash figure, which is the one place a very open label goes quiet.

Minced whole free range British chicken at 67%, ground bone included, and the lighter recipe in every respect at 140 kcal per 100g. Protein converts to 44.9% of dry matter with fat at 38.4%, so it suits a dog that needs the muscle without quite so much of the fuel. It feeds in a noticeably bigger portion as a result.

£6.46 a kilo for the Chicken and £7.62 a kilo for the Beef. Both come in 250g and 500g tubs.

Taking the standard maintenance estimate for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75), the Beef works out at roughly 429 grams a day and £3.27. The Chicken comes to roughly 600 grams and £3.88. Honey's own guide for a hard-working dog goes up to 175 grams per 5kg of bodyweight a day at the top of its scale.