Naked Dog Cold Pressed: Salmon & Trout review

Cold pressing is a strong category on our scoring and its midpoint earns our Good band. Four of these five recipes hold that word, the Surf & Turf strongest among them and the Duck & Venison the quietest, and all four sit level with the category's middle. The Beef climbs a shelf higher into our Excellent band, with its beef split between ground and hydrolysed forms to reach 27% and the lightest carbohydrate load in the range behind it. The other three read Outstanding on transparency, with their remaining pillars settling between Average and Good. The base pulls against those named meat leads. Carbohydrate converts to between 42.3% and 46.8% of dry matter, against 43.2% typical for cold-pressed food, so potato is still carrying plenty of the load.

Ingredients, as declared: Ground Salmon (25%), sweet potato, potato, ground Trout (8%), linseed oil, hydrolysed Salmon, dried apples, dried kale, chicory fibre, spirulina, green mussel powder, manan-oligosacharides, glucosomise, chondroitin sulphate

The pressing method is the reason this range exists. The mix is never cooked and expanded at high temperature. It is pressed into a dense pellet at low temperature, and that pellet crumbles in water where expanded kibble swells. For a dog that eats fast, or one that has never got on with conventional kibble, it is a genuinely different eating experience out of the same sort of bag.

Every recipe leads with a named animal, and the leads run from 16% ground white fish on the Surf & Turf to 27% on the Beef and the Chicken. Several use hydrolysed material alongside the ground meat. That is protein broken down into smaller fragments, easy to absorb and often chosen for palatability, though it is a processed form and not whole meat. The Beef and the Surf & Turf group the two together, and the label prints a total beside them. You can see what you are getting.

Sweet potato and potato build the base in all five, with tapioca joining them in the Surf & Turf. Wheat, maize and rice are all absent, so a grain-free routine is served, but the starch load is real: carbohydrate converts to between 42.3% and 46.8% of dry matter. Chicory fibre brings inulin as a prebiotic. Dried apples and dried kale add a little fruit and greenery, and seaweed or spirulina carries trace minerals.

The joint and gut tail is the most distinctive thing about the range. Every label closes with green mussel powder, glucosamine, chondroitin sulphate, then the prebiotic mannan oligosaccharides. Chondroitin and glucosamine are the two most familiar joint supplements in the business. Mussel supplies much the same sort of compounds naturally. What no label gives is a dose, so the inclusion is visible but not measurable, and the shellfish origin of the mussel is worth registering in a strict avoidance household.

Moisture is the one figure Naked Dog does not print, and that is unusual. The dry matter column here therefore works from the standard 8% assumption for a pressed food, with no declared number to use. That shifts the conversions slightly without changing the picture. Protein as fed runs from 25.0% to 27.0% across the five, and fat sits at 13.0% on every one. Ash swings from 6.0% on the Salmon & Trout to 11.0% on the Beef and the Duck & Venison. That tracks how much bone-bearing material each recipe carries.

Ground salmon at 25% and ground trout at 8%, with hydrolysed salmon behind them and no land animal anywhere on the label. Protein is the highest of the range here at 29.3% of dry matter, with the lightest ash at 6.5%. At 365 kcal per 100g this is the most concentrated bag of the five, so the daily measure is the smallest.

The Beef and the Chicken are £7.60 a kilo, the Surf & Turf is £7.98, and the Duck & Venison and the Salmon & Trout are £8.36. All five come in 2.5kg and 10kg bags.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works to about 840 kcal a day, on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75). Across this range that works out at between 230 and 249 grams, or £1.89 to £2.01 a day depending on the recipe. The label's own guide puts a 15kg dog at 190 grams a day.