Natures Menu Complete & Balanced 80/20 Minced Block: Duck review

There is no weak recipe in this range. All six sit in our Outstanding band, the two turkey led recipes strongest among them and the Beef just behind. A typical raw food earns the same band, so this range is meeting the highest standard in the most competitive category we cover. It does that on every recipe, with no single flagship carrying it. Protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value read Outstanding on all six. The 80% meat inclusion is what carries it, with carbohydrate topping out at 20.4% of dry matter and dropping as low as 9.7%.

Ingredients, as declared: Duck 80%, Plum 4%, Swede 4%, Carrot 4%, Peas 3%, Spinach 1%, Pea Fibre, Minerals, Yeast Products (as a source of prebiotic MOS and beta glucans) (0.016%), Yucca, Green Tea

Eighty per cent of each recipe is animal, and the label says so plainly, with the species named and percentaged at the head of every list. Behind it sits a fruit and vegetable fraction of about a fifth, then pea fibre, added minerals, a trace of yeast product, yucca and green tea. That is the entire shopping list.

Each recipe is matched with a fruit, and it is not simply decoration for the pack. Blackberry goes with the beef, plum with the duck, redcurrant with the goose and turkey, raspberry with the salmon and chicken. Fruit at 4% brings antioxidants and a touch of natural sweetness, and it fills the non meat fraction more interestingly than a plain root vegetable would.

Minerals are added and dosed per kilo, and the panel is printed rather than summarised. Selenium arrives in an inactivated selenised yeast. Of the two forms a label can use, that one is better absorbed than a plain mineral salt. The separate yeast product at 0.016% is there for prebiotic MOS and beta glucans, feeding the gut bacteria a dog depends on.

Most of the vegetable work goes to swede and carrot. Peas contribute a little plant protein, and several lists finish with spinach or chicory. Chicory root carries inulin, a prebiotic fibre, which pairs neatly with the yeast product at the other end of the list. Pea fibre is what holds a mince of this richness together in the block.

Read the analysis and you are looking at meat, as you should be. Protein converts to between 37.5% and 43.3% of dry matter and fat to between 28.1% and 36.7%, with carbohydrate at its highest in the turkey recipe and its lowest in the salmon and chicken. Energy runs from 147 to 163 kcal per 100g, a narrow band by raw standards, so moving between recipes barely changes the scoop.

Duck at 80% with plum at 4%, one of the recipes here built on a bird plenty of dogs have never met. Fat converts to 31.0% of dry matter and at 147 kcal per 100g it is the lightest block of the six, so portions run a little larger than elsewhere in the range.

The Farm-reared Turkey is £4.18 a kilo, the Farm Reared Goose and Turkey and the Lamb are £4.88, and the Beef, the Duck and the Salmon and Chicken are £6.50. All six come as 500g blocks.

On the standard maintenance estimate for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75), daily feeding lands between £2.24 and £3.71. Portions barely move across the range, from 515 to 571 grams a day, so the spread follows the per kilo figure rather than energy density.