Jessica's K9 Kitchen Jessica's Stew: Pork, Beef & Lamb — No Root Veg review

Each of the three sits in our Excellent band, with the chicken version a whisker behind its siblings, while the typical fresh food sits above them in our Outstanding band. That gap is worth reading properly. No category we score is stronger than fresh, so keeping pace with it is hard work, and a band under it still describes a genuinely good dinner. The pillars show where the credit is earned, protein and processing and nutritional balance both reading Outstanding on all three recipes, with transparency Good.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh Meat: 60%, Lean beef (16%), beef heart (16%), beef tongue (16%), pork leg (16%), pork tongue (16%), Offal: 10%, Beef liver (5%), lamb lung (5%), Fresh Bone: 10%, Pork bone (10%), Added Seasonal Vegetables, [e.g. Root Vegetables & Greens]

The build is identical across the range: 60% fresh meat, 10% offal, 10% fresh bone and the balance in seasonal vegetables. That is the whole prey idea behind raw feeding, only gently prepared and not served raw, which keeps the shape of the diet while taking the handling worry out of the kitchen.

The cuts are unusually specific. Lean beef, beef heart, beef tongue, pork leg and pork tongue each carry a 16% figure. Those five together come to more than the 60% they sit inside, so they read as proportions of the meat fraction and not of the finished recipe. Heart and tongue are hard working muscles that are dense and nutritious. Very few labels bother to name them at all.

Offal is beef liver at 5% and lamb lung at 5% in every version. Few things a dog eats carry more nutrients than liver, which brings vitamin A, B12, copper and folate together. Lung is lean, light connective tissue that most dogs take to easily. Bone is ground in at 10%, from pork in two recipes and chicken in the third, and that is where the calcium comes from even though no calcium figure is printed.

The vegetables are the loosest part of the label, described as added seasonal vegetables with root vegetables and greens given as examples. Buying to the season is a real kitchen practice rather than a way of hiding anything. It does mean the plant side moves through the year, which suits most dogs and is worth a question for one avoiding a particular vegetable.

Fresh food is mostly water, 75% of it here, so the declared figures look modest until that water comes out of the sum. Protein then converts to 47.0% of dry matter, fat to 14.0% and the carbohydrate estimate to 26.7%, a lean and meaty profile. The energy figure of 94.3 kcal per 100g is our estimate rather than a declared one.

This is the version for dogs that do without root vegetables, and of the three it alone is listed for adults only. Its meat fraction is the fully itemised one, lean beef, beef heart, beef tongue, pork leg and pork tongue at 16% each. Pork bone comes in at 10%, with beef liver and lamb lung at 5% each. Worth knowing that the printed list still gives root vegetables as an example of the seasonal veg, so confirm the batch with the kitchen.

£10.00 a kilo on all three recipes, each sold in a 500g pack, with multi packs going out as subscription boxes.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats around 891 grams a day. That works from about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate) and an estimated 94.3 kcal per 100g. That works out at £8.91 a day, the same figure on every version, since the three share an analysis.