Naturo Adult Trays: Chicken with Rice & Vegetables review

Every recipe here lands in our Good band and the four finish level. No tray is better made than the others, so the choice is which animal your dog gets on with. Wet food does well on our scoring as a category, and its midpoint sits a step above these trays in our Excellent band. Every tray reads Outstanding for transparency and Good for protein and processing, with nutritional balance Good or better and value Good as well, a balanced picture with no weak spot. That comes from meat that is named and quantified, a modest grain declared instead of hidden under a cereal heading, and a carbohydrate estimate near the wet norm on three of the four. The Chicken and Lamb is the exception, with an estimated 25.8% carbohydrate on a dry matter basis where 15.8% is typical of adult wet food.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 65%, Brown Rice 12.5% (from 5.2% Dried Brown Rice), Vegetables 10% (from 1.8% Dried Potato, Carrots and Peas), Minerals, Sunflower Oil 0.75%, Salmon Oil 0.3%, Tomato Powder 0.15%, Dried Kelp 0.08%, Dried Cranberry 0.05%, Dried Blueberry 0.05%, Dried Chicory Root 0.04%, Yeast 0.04%, Dried Basil 0.016%, Yucca Powder 0.01%, Pomegranate Extract 0.002%

Meat leads every label. Three of the recipes put a single animal at 65% and the fourth splits chicken and lamb at 32.5% each. Either way the figure is printed on the label, never left to guesswork. Protein converts to between 35.2% and 38.5% of dry matter across the four, a solid reading for food fed from a tray.

Cereal means brown rice and nothing else, declared at 12.5%, and Naturo goes further than most by printing the dried weight it comes from, 5.2%, alongside the reconstituted figure. Rice of this kind is the calm, familiar carrier a dog with an ordinary constitution digests without fuss, and at this share it supports the meat rather than replacing any of it.

The vegetables arrive as one 10% entry covering potato, carrots and peas, again with the 1.8% dried portion shown. Grouping them like that keeps the exact split private, which matters if you are excluding potato specifically, though the three named vegetables are all everyday additions and none of them is a surprise.

Two fats are added: sunflower oil at 0.75%, salmon oil at 0.3%. Sunflower brings vitamin E with it and is among the gentler plant oils. The salmon oil is there for the marine omega 3. That is also what puts fish on labels headed chicken, duck or lamb.

The bottom of the list is a garden. Tomato powder sits at 0.15%, kelp at 0.08%, and cranberry and blueberry at 0.05% each. Chicory root and yeast are at 0.04%, basil at 0.016%, yucca at 0.01% and pomegranate extract at 0.002%. Chicory root is the one worth pointing at, since it carries inulin, a fibre that feeds the gut's own good bacteria. The rest are flourishes, all of them declared to the decimal place.

Added vitamins and trace minerals are printed with doses on every tray. The Lamb's panel is the odd one out, listing vitamin D3 at 250IU where the others print 350IU and leaving copper off altogether. That only matters if you are matching panels closely between recipes.

Chicken at 65%. Once the water is taken out its protein is the range's strongest at 38.5% of dry matter, and its carbohydrate estimate the lowest at 17.3%. The ordinary choice, and ordinary is a compliment here.

£3.75 a kilo on the Chicken, the Duck and the Chicken and Lamb, and £3.93 a kilo on the Lamb, all in 400g trays.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in steady condition comes to between £2.60 and £2.65 a day depending on the recipe, or somewhere between 667 and 706 grams. That rests on a daily energy need of about 840 kcal, which is what the standard 110 × bodyweight^0.75 maintenance calculation gives for a dog that size.