Natural Greatness Ultra Premium All Age & Breed: Lamb Recipe review

The lamb recipe earns our Good band, the ground most adult dry food occupies, and the Wild recipe steps a band above it into Excellent. The two are closer than that sounds, and the reason for the gap is not what you would expect. The Wild recipe carries more meat and more protein, and the space between them opens on nutritional balance, which reads Excellent there against Good on the lamb; on transparency both read Outstanding. The lamb tells you exactly what is in it.

Both are built on dehydrated meat rather than fresh headline weights, and both keep carbohydrate under the level typical of the category, so neither reads as a food coasting on starch.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated lamb meat (24%), Fresh lamb meat (11%), Chicken oil (11%), Peas, Potato, Lamb liver hydrolyzate (3%), Carrot, Pumpkin, Potato protein, Yeast, Beet pulp, Salmon Oil (3%), Flaxseed, Mixed fruits (Apple and Blueberries) Mixed vegetables (Tomato and Spinach), Algae, Mannan-oligosaccharides (MOS 0.1%), Inulin (FOS 0.1%), Yucca schidigera, Rosemary, Parsley, Glucosamine 650 mg/kg, Chondroitin 150 mg/kg.

The construction is the same in both recipes: dehydrated meat first, then a starch, then an animal oil high enough to matter. Dried meat at the top of a kibble list is the more reliable sight. Its water is gone before anyone works out the percentage. Fresh meat sheds weight in the oven, so an 11% fresh lamb entry does less for the finished food than the figure suggests.

The lamb recipe is the more transparent of the two and the more colourful. Lamb liver hydrolysate at 3% is there to make the food taste of something a dog wants, and salmon oil at 3% and flaxseed bring the omega 3s. Carrot, pumpkin, apple, blueberry, tomato, spinach and algae give it a genuine plate of plants, not a token dusting. Protein converts to 31.5% of dry matter and carbohydrate to 40.2%, well below the 46.2% typical of adult dry food.

The Wild recipe is the muscular one. Its dehydrated block of duck, turkey and chicken runs to 29%, fresh rabbit adds 10%, and hydrolysed chicken liver at 4% deepens the flavour, giving 33.0% protein and 19.0% fat for 405 kcal per 100g. Carbohydrate drops to 33.1% of dry matter, which is a genuinely meat forward figure for a dry food. What that construction gives up is precision: the three birds share one number, poultry oil at 12% names none of them, and a dog with a bird sensitivity is left guessing.

Behind the meat, both labels do the same sensible things. Beet pulp supplies fermentable fibre, yeast and potato protein fill in the middle, and FOS and MOS act as prebiotics for the bacteria that keep a gut settled. Yucca schidigera is a practical addition, aimed at the smell of the stools. Rosemary and parsley close the lamb list, and rosemary also keeps the fats from turning rancid.

Taurine is dosed on both, at 700 mg on the lamb and 750 mg on the Wild recipe, which supports the heart and is worth having on a grain free label. Iron at 75 mg, zinc at 120 mg and iodine at 3.5 mg per kilo: each trace mineral gets its own printed dose. The forms are oxides and sulphates, not the chelates a dog absorbs most easily. Neither label prints a calcium figure, which is the one gap that matters on a bag sold for growth.

The named and colourful one, with dehydrated lamb at 24%, fresh lamb at 11% and lamb liver hydrolysate at 3%, so the red meat is the only land animal in the recipe. The fats come from chicken oil at 11% and salmon oil at 3%, with carrot, pumpkin, apple, blueberry, tomato, spinach and algae making up the plant side. It sits at 29.0% protein and 17.0% fat for 385 kcal per 100g.

Both recipes are sold in 2kg and 10kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 218 grams a day of the lamb or about 207 grams of the Wild recipe. Both portions come off around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The labels are a little more sparing for a quiet dog of that weight, asking 161 grams and 145 grams respectively, so let the waistline settle where your dog belongs between the two.