McAdams Raw Preserve: Free Range Chicken review

Both flavours sit in our Outstanding band, and neither finishes ahead of the other. That leaves the bird to decide it. The typical freeze-dried food sits in that band as well, which shows how demanding this format has become, and these two sit at the upper end of it. What puts them there is plain enough: a meat share in the mid eighties from one named animal, and a plant list of three entries with a percentage on each. Add almost no carbohydrate and a supplement panel that prints figures instead of hints. Protein and processing, nutritional balance and transparency all read Outstanding on both labels.

Ingredients, as declared: Whole British Free Range Chicken 86%, Sweet Potato 5%, Carrots 5%, Cranberries 1%, Glucosamine (750mg/kg), Chondroitin Sulphate (750mg/kg), Yucca, Green Tea, Dandelion Root, Hawthorn Leaf, Seaweed 0.15%.

Freeze drying works by freezing the food and letting the ice turn straight to vapour under vacuum, so nothing is heated and nothing is cooked. What comes out is the raw recipe with its water gone. Moisture is 5% for the chicken and 2% for the turkey, and that is why energy runs so high at 508 and 543 kcal per 100g.

The chicken recipe uses whole chicken at 86%, which means the bird with its bone, and that bone is what puts calcium at 0.84% of dry matter without any mineral top up. The turkey is declared boneless at 86.5% and yet carries the higher calcium reading at 1.39% of dry matter, a wrinkle in the labelling that the maker is best placed to explain.

Everything on the plant side is named, and there is not much of it. Sweet potato and carrots at 5% each, with cranberries at 1%, is the whole of it. The carbohydrate estimate therefore stays at 6.8% of dry matter for the chicken and 14.4% for the turkey. Cranberry is a small entry with a long reputation behind it for supporting the urinary tract.

Behind the food sits a herbal tail few labels bother with: yucca, green tea, dandelion root and hawthorn leaf on both recipes, with chicory extract added to the turkey and seaweed on each. Each of these is a fraction of a percent. Read them as character, not as pharmacy. Green tea's antioxidants and chicory's inulin still earn their small place.

Glucosamine and chondroitin sulphate each arrive at 750mg per kilo, and both labels print the figure instead of gesturing at it in the marketing. The vitamin and mineral panel behind them gives vitamin A at 7500IU, D3 at 250IU and E at 50mg, with zinc supplied as a chelate at 15mg. Selenium comes as selenised yeast, an organic form absorbed more readily than the inorganic salt most labels use. Preservation is by mixed tocopherols.

Fat is where the two part company. The chicken converts to 37.9% of dry matter with protein at 45.3%, while the turkey runs richer still at 41.8% fat against 35.7% protein. Either way this is rich food, so a dog arriving from a leaner bowl deserves a gradual introduction over a week or so.

Whole British free range chicken at 86%, bone included, which is what puts calcium at 0.84% of dry matter with no mineral top up needed. It is the higher protein recipe of the two at 45.3% of dry matter and the gentler on fat, at 508 kcal per 100g, and its added panel carries biotin where the turkey's does not. Seaweed sits at 0.15% and green tea, dandelion root and hawthorn leaf finish the list.

Both recipes come in a 400g pack and a 1.5kg pack.

As a guide, work from roughly 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is about 165 grams a day on the chicken and 155 grams on the turkey. Those weights are dry, measured before any water you choose to add at the bowl.