Natural Dog Food Company Adult: Lamb review

All three land in our Good band, and so does the typical adult dry food. What lifts them is the meat, declared at 43% to 44% and printed as fresh, dried, fat and gravy so the split is visible instead of guessed at. Two things hold them back. One is the plant side, with carbohydrate between 47.2% and 51.6% of dry matter. The other is the missing supplement panel, and our scoring has nothing to verify on the micronutrient side without it.

Ingredients, as declared: 44% Lamb (including 26% Freshly Prepared Lamb, 17% Dried Lamb, 1% Lamb Gravy), Brown Rice, Oats, Fruits*, Vegetables*, Herbs*, Linseed, Sugar Beet, Sunflower Oil, Brewers Yeast. *9% combined inclusion.

The meat headline is broken out in full on every bag, which is the most useful thing this label does. Inside its 44%, the chicken recipe declares 26% freshly prepared chicken, 12% dried chicken, then 3% chicken fat and 3% chicken gravy. The lamb gives 26% fresh, 17% dried and 1% gravy, and the salmon 26% fresh and 17% dried inside its 43%. Cooking drives off the water that makes up most of fresh meat, so read the dried figure to see what actually reaches the bowl.

Brown rice and oats are the grains, both whole and both gentler than the refined cereals often found in this slot, with sugar beet behind them supplying fibre. Carbohydrate ends up between 47.2% and 51.6% of dry matter depending on the flavour, so the plant side is doing real work in these recipes.

Fruits, vegetables and herbs share a single 9% declaration with no names attached. This is the label's one quiet moment. The mix can shift between batches and the ingredients list will not change a word. Linseed and brewers yeast are named at least, and linseed is where the omega 3s come from.

The headline decision is the missing vitamin and mineral premix. The brand states plainly that its Original range is built to deliver complete nutrition from the ingredients themselves, with no supplement blend behind them. What you read on the list really is everything in the bag. It is a bold position, openly held. The flip side is that no mineral figures are printed for anyone to check. If your dog has a particular need, raise it with your vet.

Protein sits at 22.0% as fed in all three, or 24.2% on a dry matter basis, with fat at 12.0%. Those are middling figures by kibble standards and they suit a dog with an ordinary week rather than a working one. None of the bags prints an energy figure, so the kcal in the table above is our estimate, worked out from the analysis.

Lamb at 44%: 26% freshly prepared, 17% dried and 1% gravy. The added fat is sunflower oil, so it comes from a plant and not an animal. Lamb is therefore the only animal on the list. Of the three it has the most fibre, 6.0%, and the least carbohydrate, 47.2% of dry matter.

£6.00 a kilo across all three flavours, sold in 2kg, 6kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 245 grams a day of the chicken, 250 of the salmon or 255 of the lamb. The working assumption is around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £1.47, £1.50 and £1.53 a day in the same order. The bag's own table asks 201 grams for a dog between 10kg and 20kg.