Luna & Me Superblends Senior's Club: With Venison review

Both recipes take our Outstanding band, and so does the typical raw food, so this pair holds the standard of a very strong category rather than climbing above it. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Outstanding on each of them, and transparency reads Excellent on the chicken recipe and Good on the venison. The chicken recipe finishes a shade ahead of the venison on our reading, mostly on the protein and mineral side, though both take the same band and your dog's preference is the better guide.

It is worth saying that the lower meat share takes nothing away from where this pair stands. An older dog does not need the protein load of a young adult, and the room has gone to fibre and to the joint ingredients.

Ingredients, as declared: 75% Meat: (35% Venison - Steak), Beef Heart, Beef Liver, Turkey Breast, Turkey Thigh, Turkey Bone, Vegetables & Fruits: Carrot, Butternut Squash, Apple, Kale, Spinach, Superfoods & Oils: Wheatgrass, Chia Seeds, Wheat Germ Oil, Coconut Oil, Nutritional Yeast, Bilberry, Green-Lipped Mussel, Salmon Oil, Chicory Root, Turmeric, Spirulina, Kelp

Meat takes 75% here, a step down on the brand's adult recipes. The room goes to the vegetables, the fruit and a longer superfood tail. For a dog past middle age that is a defensible trade, and the offal stays exactly where it was.

Turmeric and green lipped mussel are the additions aimed at age. Both have long joint reputations, the mussel for its unusual omega fats. Neither carries a printed percentage in the tail, so treat them as a gentle lean and not a measured dose.

Beef supplies the organ meats in both recipes, whichever animal fronts the pack. Liver, heart and kidney between them carry the vitamins and trace minerals a recipe with no added premix has to find elsewhere, and in an older dog that density counts for more than volume does.

Bone sits inside the meat figure, chicken bone in one recipe and turkey bone in the other, which puts calcium at 1.92% of dry matter on the chicken and 1.46% on the venison. Both are comfortable levels for a grown dog.

Fibre is where the venison recipe quietly does something different, reaching 4.6% of dry matter against 2.9% on the chicken, which tends to suit an older gut. Protein converts to 46.8% and 43.6% respectively, and carbohydrate stops at 8.1% on the higher of the two, nearly all of it the by difference estimate rather than an ingredient you could point to.

Venison steak at 35% heads a mix that also carries beef heart and liver and turkey breast, thigh and bone. At 148 kcal per 100g it is the lighter recipe, so portions run larger, and it brings more fibre and more protein along with a meat most older dogs will never have tried.

Each pack holds six patties and weighs 600g. The chicken recipe is £7.50 a kilo and the venison £7.92.

Put a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition at about 840 kcal a day, the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75). That works out at roughly 503 grams a day on the chicken recipe, or £3.77, and 568 grams on the lighter venison, or £4.50.