James & Ella Freeze-Dried Raw: Country Game review

All three flavours land in our Outstanding band, the chicken and the beef a shade ahead of Country Game, which makes the choice a question of which animal suits your dog. The typical freeze-dried food sits in that band too, which tells you how strong this corner of the market has become. To keep pace, a bag has to be almost entirely named animal, honestly percentaged and sensibly supplemented. These labels manage all three, with protein and processing and transparency reading Outstanding on every flavour, nutritional balance Outstanding on the chicken and the beef and Excellent on Country Game, and value Outstanding throughout.

Ingredients, as declared: Duck (26%), Venison (26%), Pork (8%), Sweet Potato (10%), Carrot (10%), Pea (10%), Apple (4.5%), Pumpkin (1%), Salmon (1%), Cranberry (1%), Vitamin & Mineral Pre-Mix (2.5%), Key ingredients highlighted on the page: Game (duck & venison), Pork, Sweet potato, Carrot, Peas, Apple, Pumpkin, Salmon, Cranberries

Freeze drying is the gentlest way to take water out of food. The recipe is frozen and the ice is drawn off as vapour, so nothing is ever cooked and nothing loses its structure. The chicken and beef recipes end at 5% moisture and Country Game at 0.1%, and 100 grams of any of them carries 490 kcal.

The chicken and beef recipes are built to the same plan: 80% of the named animal, with its heart at 5% and its liver at 5% counted inside that figure. Much of an animal's micronutrition sits in its organs. Naming them and putting a figure on each, with no vague total to hide behind, says something about the kitchen. Country Game splits its animal share three ways instead.

The plant side is modest and named throughout. Sweet potato, carrot and peas do the carbohydrate work, with apple, pumpkin and cranberry in small print behind them. Country Game leans harder that way, at 10% each for sweet potato, carrot and pea. That lifts its fibre to 8% and its carbohydrate estimate to 21.1% of dry matter, where the chicken sits at 11.6%.

Salmon at 1% appears on all three lists, a small entry doing the job oily fish does best, bringing omega 3 into a recipe otherwise built on land animals. Country Game names its vitamin and mineral premix at 2.5%, and the panel behind it is printed with figures. Vitamin A comes in at 7500IU, D3 at 250IU, E at 50mg, with a little biotin alongside. Zinc is supplied as a chelate at 15mg, and selenium as selenised yeast, the form of the two permitted that a dog takes up more readily.

Preservation is handled with tocopherol extracts at 150mg and rosemary oil at 4mg, both natural antioxidants that slow fats turning rancid. In food this fat rich, converting to between 29% and 35.8% of dry matter, that work matters more than it would elsewhere.

Duck at 26% and venison at 26% share the top of this list, with pork at 8% behind them. That makes it the one recipe here bringing three land animals together, and the one to read twice on a strict exclusion plan. It also carries the biggest plant share, at 10% each for sweet potato, carrot and pea, which gives it the highest fibre in the range at 8%. At 0.1% moisture it is the driest of the three, and calcium is not printed on this label where the other two carry a figure.

£50.00 a kilo on all three flavours, sold in bags from 1kg up to 10kg.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 171 grams a day, working from roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £8.57 a day on any of the three, since they share an energy figure.