Nutriment Raw Nuggets: Lamb review

All three bags reach our Outstanding band. The middle of the raw category sits there too. On our scoring, raw is the hardest field of all, so three bags at that mark is a real result. A very high named animal share and a short, legible list of everything else are what earn it. There is very little between the three, so pick on your dog's tastes and not on the order.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb 85% (Muscle Meat, Rib, Lung, Liver, Heart), Pumpkin, Broccoli, Chicory, Blueberry, Kelp, Coconut Oil, Algae Oil, Minerals. Minerals (per kg): Vitamins: 3a672a / Vitamin A 6,500 IU, 3a671 / Vitamin D3 650 IU, 3a700 / Vitamin E 100 mg, 3b103 / Iron 50 mg, 3b202 / Iodine 0.78 mg, 3b405 / Copper 2.5 mg, 3b406 / Copper 2.5 mg, 3b503 / Manganese 20 mg, 3b605 / Zinc 50 mg, 3b801 / Selenium 0.15 mg.

The arithmetic barely moves between the bags. One named animal takes 85% or 86% of the recipe with its cuts and offal spelled out, a small vegetable fraction follows with pumpkin at the front, and a mineral top-up finishes. No category word stands in for a cut anywhere, so you can see which parts of the animal you are buying.

Bone is where the three quietly differ. Chicken arrives with meaty back and lamb with rib, both of which grind bone into the food. The Beef bag lists muscle meat, tripe, kidney, lung, heart, liver and fat with no bone among them. Beef's mineral panel prints calcium at 1800 mg per kilo, so in that recipe the calcium is added rather than ground in. That is a perfectly sound way to build it, and the label is open about doing so.

The vegetable fraction is small and sensibly picked. Pumpkin leads all three, with broccoli and apple behind it in the Beef, courgette in the Chicken, and broccoli, blueberry and kelp in the Lamb. Chicory turns up in every bag, a root whose inulin feeds the gut's own bacteria and which happens to taste faintly sweet.

Algae oil is the quiet highlight. The long chain omega 3 fats it carries would normally come from fish oil. Not one of these three recipes puts fish in the bowl. In raw food that is unusual, and it is easy to miss on a quick read. It matters if your dog reacts to fish, or if your household simply leaves fish out.

Mineral declarations are printed differently from bag to bag. Beef prints a full per-kilo panel, Lamb tucks the same style of list into its ingredients line, and the Chicken panel trails off at selenium with no figure beside it. All three are clearly built to one pattern, so that gap reads as a printing slip and not as a missing nutrient.

Nothing starchy appears on any of these labels. Carbohydrate is worked out by difference, and the figure mostly sweeps up whatever the analysis leaves unmeasured. That is why the Chicken reads at 13.6% of dry matter while the Beef sits at 6.1%, from ingredient lists that are hard to tell apart on the starch question.

Lamb at 85% comes as muscle meat, rib, lung, liver and heart, with the rib grinding bone into the mix. Of the three it has the most protein, 47.3% of dry matter, and the least fat at 33.1%. Blueberry, kelp and coconut oil join its vegetables. With no bird in it, this is the natural pick for a poultry-free household.

Beef and Lamb are both £6.99 a kilo. The Chicken is £6.59 a kilo. All three come in 1kg bags of loose nuggets.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition the target is about 840 kcal a day, on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75). On these energy figures that works out at roughly 515g of the Chicken at £3.40 a day, 567g of the Lamb at £3.96, or 569g of the Beef at £3.98.