Luna & Me Adult: Dandy Duck (Mince) review

Eight of the twelve land in our Excellent band, with the beef and the pork a step up in Outstanding. That is also where the typical raw food sits, so the reading is a measure of the category's standard, not of these recipes. No category we score is tougher than raw, so holding all twelve labels this high, from the everyday chicken to the whole rabbit, is the achievement. Every recipe reads Outstanding for nutritional balance. Protein and processing is Outstanding on the beef, the pork and the rabbit and Good across the poultry and the lamb, so let the animal and the richness decide.

Ingredients, as declared: 85% Duck: (Breast, Thigh, Gizzard, Liver, Bone), Vegetables & Fruits: Butternut Squash, Carrot, Kale, Apple, Spinach, Superfoods & Oils: Chia Seeds, Goji Berry, Wheatgrass, Coconut Oil, Nutritional Yeast, Bilberry, Salmon Oil, Wheat Germ Oil, Chicory Root, Spirulina, Kelp

The arithmetic is identical on every label. Meat takes 85%, and inside that figure sit the muscle cuts, the organs and the ground bone, so nothing is added later to make the calcium work. Vegetables and fruit take most of what is left, always the same five, and the superfood tail behind them reads long but weighs very little.

The organ work here is proper. Heart, liver, kidney and gizzard turn up according to the animal. Organs are where a carcass keeps most of its vitamins and trace minerals, and that is what lets a recipe like this stand up without a vitamin premix behind it.

There is no added vitamin and mineral panel anywhere in the range, and the brand's stated position is that its ranges need no supplementing. Kelp is doing the iodine, salmon oil the vitamin D and the long chain omega fats, nutritional yeast the B vitamins, and the offal much of the rest. It is a whole food argument, and the offal share is what makes it credible.

Salmon oil is in all twelve, which means fish is too, including in the recipes named after one animal. The same applies to wheat germ oil and wheatgrass. Neither carries the starchy, gluten-bearing part of the grain that a wheat sensitive dog reacts to, though both come from the wheat plant. A household avoiding wheat on principle should know they are on the list.

The analyses read like meat, which is how raw should look. Protein converts to between 43.4% and 59.2% of dry matter across the range, fat to between 19.7% and 43.5%, and carbohydrate never gets past 6.9%. Most of that last figure is the by difference estimate sweeping up whatever the analysis does not measure. Calcium tracks the bone, from 0.94% of dry matter in the lamb to 3.67% in the whole rabbit.

Format is a genuine choice here. The patties come six to a pack and thaw one at a time, which suits a small dog or a household that feeds by the piece. The mince boxes suit a larger dog and a bowl weighed out fresh each morning.

Duck again, this time as 750g of mince. It is one of the lighter recipes at 163 kcal per 100g, so a 15kg dog works through around 515 grams a day. That puts a box at a little under a day and a half of feeding.

Patties are sold in 600g packs of six and minces in 750g boxes. Per kilo, the patties run from £6.08 for the Chick, Chick Chicken to £10.83 for the Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit. The two beef recipes are £7.08, the duck, turkey and pork £6.58 and the lamb £8.08. The mince boxes are £5.53 for the chicken, £6.07 for the duck and the turkey, and £6.33 for the beef.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing about 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), a day's feeding lands between £2.22 and £7.58. The spread is mostly energy density: the rabbit is the lightest recipe at 120 kcal per 100g and feeds in much larger portions than the chicken at 209.