Michie's of Cornwall Premium Complete Adult: Free Range Chicken with Lamb review

Raw sets the highest standard of anything we cover, so a place in our Outstanding band here is won against very tough company. All five take it, and the middle of the raw category earns the same word, so these recipes stand level with a field that is already excellent rather than towering over it. The Turkey with Lamb carries the heaviest mineral load of the five, ash converting to 16.4% of dry matter, and its protein lands under its stablemates at 40.8%. It still reaches the same band as the rest. Protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value read Outstanding on every tub, so the five differ from one another by degree rather than by any real gap.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat & Offal Content: 35% Free Range/Organic Chicken, 25% Lamb with Bone, 10% Chicken Liver, Vegetables & Fruit Content: Fresh Broccoli/Runner Beans 7%, Cooked White Potato 7%, Fresh Carrot 7%, Fresh Apple (Deseeded) 6%, Cooked Sweet Potato 2%, Botanicals/Oils Content: Alfalfa, Organic Cod Liver Oil, Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Sea Kelp, Organic Turmeric

The arithmetic is identical across the range and it is a generous one. Meat and offal make up seventy percent of every tub, and the offal is no token: liver is declared at 10% in all five. Liver is where much of an animal's vitamin A sits, along with its copper and its B vitamins. The remaining third is made up of vegetables and fruit and a short botanical line, with nothing unaccounted for.

Bone comes in through the meat, with no separate mineral entry for it. The Free Range Chicken uses chicken with bone and no carcass, the Turkey uses turkey with bone, and the Chicken with Lamb takes its bone from the lamb. The Wild Venison spells out ribs at 20%, split as 10% meat and 10% bone. No calcium figure is printed anywhere, so ash is the only clue to how much is in there. It runs from 10.5% of dry matter on the Turkey up to 16.4% on the Turkey with Lamb.

The plant side is unusual for raw and deliberate. Every recipe carries the same plant fraction: fresh carrot at 7%, cooked white potato at 7%, broccoli or runner beans at 7%, cooked sweet potato at 2% and deseeded apple at 6%. Cooking the two potatoes is what makes their starch usable, and it is the reason carbohydrate here converts to between 11.4% and 16.1% of dry matter where the typical raw food sits at 5.0%. Those potatoes are there by design, and they give these recipes a gentler energy source than fat alone.

There is no vitamin and mineral premix. The botanicals and oils line is asked to carry that job: organic cod liver oil for vitamin D and omega 3, organic sea kelp for iodine, and alfalfa for its minerals and fibre. Organic coconut oil brings its medium chain fats, and organic turmeric closes the line. Coupled with 10% liver in every tub, it is a coherent whole-food position, and the liver is what makes it credible.

For a dog on a narrow diet, three of these recipes keep to one land animal each and the other two pair a bird with lamb. The one thing no recipe avoids is fish, because the cod liver oil is in all of them. That only matters to a household steering fish off the menu, and having it declared on the label beats finding it hidden inside a generic oils and fats entry.

Chicken drops to 35% here and lamb with bone comes in at 25%, with chicken liver still at 10%. Lamb brings the fat with it, converting to 31.3% of dry matter, the richest reading in the range, and at 150 kcal per 100g this is the most concentrated tub of the five.

The Turkey is £5.90 a kilo, the Free Range Chicken, the Chicken with Lamb and the Turkey with Lamb are £6.44, and the Wild Venison is £6.98. All five come in 500g and 1kg packs.

Depending on the recipe, a day's feeding costs between £3.61 and £6.33 for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Energy density drives that spread, since the leanest recipes feed in the largest portions. Michie's own guide is simpler: 3% of bodyweight a day on the single meat recipes and 2% on the two meat ones, which for a 15kg dog is 450 grams or 300 grams.