Lily's Kitchen Organic Trays Adult: Chicken Supper review

All three trays finish in our Good band, a rung below the wet shelf's middle, which sits in our Excellent band. The Chicken Supper sits just behind its two siblings, with transparency at Excellent where theirs both reach Outstanding. The three analyses are near enough identical, so that gap is narrow. What separates the chicken tray is the spread of animals inside it, not a better bowl of food.

Across all three the strengths are the same. The animal share is genuinely high at 54% of the tray, every animal is named and counted, and the carbohydrate is close to nothing. The organic certification runs through the whole list, not just the headline meat. Two things keep them from climbing further. Each tray shares its meat between several animals, which counts against it for anyone feeding to avoid a particular one, and the plant side stops at carrots and peas with a little spelt.

Ingredients, as declared: Organic Chicken* (28%), Organic Pork* (12%), Organic Beef* (10%), Organic Fish* (4%), Organic Carrots* (2.8%), Organic Peas* (2.8%), Organic Spelt*, Minerals, Organic Alfalfa*, Organic Cleavers*, Organic Spirulina*. *Natural Ingredient.

Organic is the point of these trays and it is carried properly. The meat, the vegetables, the spelt and even the alfalfa and spirulina all carry the mark, which is a good deal harder to source than certifying the headline ingredient alone and leaving the rest ordinary.

Hold on to one number here: 54% of each tray is animal, always split between three or four species. Beef Supper is beef at 36%, chicken at 14% and pork at 4%. Chicken Supper runs chicken at 28%, pork at 12%, beef at 10% and fish at 4%. The Chicken with Salmon is chicken at 26%, beef at 13%, salmon at 10% and pork at 5%. Each of those is a good, digestible meat in its own right, and each is declared with a figure, which is unusually open. The catch is that no tray here is a single protein tray, whatever the name says.

One entry stays vague. The fish in the Chicken Supper is declared as organic fish without a species, so a household avoiding a particular fish has no way to check it from the label. The salmon in the third tray, by contrast, is named outright.

Organic spelt is the only cereal in the range and it sits low in every list. Spelt is an ancient wheat, richer than the modern sort in B vitamins and magnesium and fibre, and many dogs that struggle with ordinary wheat handle it comfortably. It does still carry wheat gluten, so it is not a route around a gluten problem. The carbohydrate it leaves behind is small: an estimated 5.5% of dry matter on the salmon tray and effectively nothing on the other two.

The plant side beyond that is brief. Organic carrots at 2.8% or 4% and organic peas at 2.8% do the real vegetable work here, and both are genuinely nutritious. Alfalfa, cleavers and spirulina finish the list at trace level. Minerals are declared, but no dosed vitamin panel arrives with these labels, which is the one thing to check on the pack itself.

The analysis is strong and consistent. Protein converts to 52.8% of dry matter on all three, fat to 33.3% on the beef and chicken trays and 27.8% on the salmon one, and crude fibre is low at 0.3%. These are rich, meat led trays, which is exactly what the ingredient list promises.

No tray spreads itself across more animals: organic chicken at 28%, organic pork at 12%, organic beef at 10% and organic fish at 4%. That fish is the one entry in the whole range not pinned to a species. It shares its analysis and its energy figure with the beef tray.

£14.33 a kilo across all three recipes, sold in 150 g trays.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat roughly 944 grams a day of the beef or the chicken tray, and 1000 grams of the Chicken with Salmon. That comes to £13.52 and £14.33 a day in turn. Behind those figures is a maintenance target of about 840 kcal a day, worked as 110 × bodyweight^0.75.