Natural Instinct Puppy: Duck and Chicken review

All six recipes hold our Outstanding band. Raw is judged against a formidable field whose midpoint lands in the Outstanding band, so an Outstanding puppy recipe here is nothing like a soft result. Protein and processing and nutritional balance read Outstanding on every recipe in the range, transparency reads Good throughout, and the recipe with the shortest animal list is the one that finishes lowest.

Ingredients, as declared: beef heart 10%, beef liver 5%, chicken 35%, duck 35%, apple, butternut squash, carrot, kelp, salmon oil, spinach, wheatgrass

The organ share is the thing that sets this range apart from most puppy food. Beef liver appears on every label at 4% or 5%, beef heart on five at 5% or 10%, and the Turkey and Tripe adds turkey heart at 20% on top of that. Few foods carry vitamin A, B12 and copper as densely as liver, and heart is muscle meat with minerals well beyond what trim carries. A growing puppy is getting the parts of the animal with the most micronutrition in them.

Beef green tripe carries four of the six recipes, from 14% in the Turkey, Salmon and Tripe up to 25% in the Turkey and Tripe. Unwashed ruminant stomach arrives with the animal's own digestive enzymes and friendly bacteria still in it, which is why raw feeders have always liked it for a young digestion finding its feet. It also happens to be one of the most persuasive smells in dog food.

Wheatgrass sits on five of the labels and brewers yeast on the Chicken. Wheatgrass is leaf and stem, not grain, so it carries no gluten and puts no cereal in the bowl. It is there as a green source of vitamins and minerals. Brewers yeast plays a similar role on the one recipe that uses it, adding B vitamins from a whole food, not a premix.

Calcium is the figure to read closely on a puppy food. It converts to 3.43% of dry matter in the Chicken and 3.02% in the Duck and Chicken, both of which point at plenty of ground bone. The two salmon recipes come in lowest, at 1.4% and 1.59%. A small or medium breed puppy is unlikely to notice the spread much. For a large breed puppy, where the calcium a growing frame receives is worth managing carefully, the leaner readings are the ones to look at first.

Energy is the other figure that moves. The Turkey and Tripe lands at 106 kcal per 100g and the Duck and Chicken at 173, which is a very wide range for six recipes with the same 85% meat share. Fat is what drives it: 25.1% of dry matter at the light end against 46.0% at the rich end. Portions therefore need setting per recipe, not per range.

Nothing starchy appears on any list, so the carbohydrate figures, estimated by difference, stay low, from 0.9% of dry matter up to 7.5%. The higher readings belong to the leanest recipes, where a smaller fat share leaves more for the estimate to sweep up, not anything added for bulk.

Duck at 35% alongside chicken at 35%, then beef liver at 5% and beef heart at 10%. Energy peaks here at 173 kcal per 100g, so portions run smallest, and it is the only label that puts duck in front of a puppy.

Per kilo, the Chicken and the Chicken & Tripe are £4.59, and the Chicken, Salmon and Tripe, the Duck and Chicken, the Turkey and Tripe and the Turkey, Salmon and Tripe are £4.99 each. All six are sold as a 1kg pack or as two 500g packs.

Taking a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition as the yardstick, needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), a day's feeding costs £2.26 to £3.95 by recipe. A growing puppy is fed on a share of its bodyweight rather than on a maintenance estimate, so a puppy's own daily amount will sit somewhere different again.