Orlando Natural Complete: Lamb review

The typical adult dry food occupies our Good band, and both of these finish a level below it, in Average. Nothing here is alarming: the reasons are structural. Maize leads each recipe, a portion of the animal content goes unnamed, and the protein that survives the oven is moderate on both bags. Set against that, the naming that is done is genuine, the trace minerals and the botanicals carry printed doses, and the analyses hold no unpleasant surprises. For a dog that eats well and holds condition, either bag is a workable everyday food.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize, Barley, Lamb (14%), Meat Meals (13%), Poultry Fat, Poultry Gravy, Beet Pulp, Linseed (1%), Minerals, Yeast Products (1000 mg/kg), Chicory Extract (1000 mg/kg), Beta Glucans (300 mg/kg), Yucca Extract (120 mg/kg), Cranberry (100 mg/kg), Parsley (100 mg/kg), Turmeric (100 mg/kg), Chamomile (100 mg/kg).

Maize opens both lists, with barley behind it on the lamb and rice and barley on the turkey. Cooked maize is perfectly digestible for most dogs and it forms the backbone of a great many dry foods, but it is not a rich source of the protein a dog uses best. That work falls to the meat entries underneath it.

The lamb bag declares lamb at 14% with meat meals at 13% behind it; the turkey bag names turkey meal at 15% ahead of a further, unnamed meat meal. Meal is dried and concentrated. Gram for gram it holds much more protein than the fresh weight of the same animal, and that works in the turkey's favour. The unnamed meal in each recipe is the honest limitation: it could come from any land animal and it can move with supply.

Poultry fat and poultry gravy run through both recipes, the fat for energy and appetite and the gravy for the coating that makes a kibble worth eating. The word poultry does not choose between chicken, turkey, duck and goose. That blurs the picture a little in general, and it matters a great deal if you are keeping a particular bird out of the bowl.

Linseed supplies the omega 3s on both bags. A dog converts that plant form slowly; the marine kind comes ready made. Give a dull coat a season to answer, not a fortnight. Beet pulp does the fibre work in each recipe, a well-behaved fermentable fibre that helps a stool hold its shape, and chicory feeds the gut bacteria alongside it.

Both labels print their vitamin and trace mineral doses in full, and the forms they use differ between the two bags, which is unusual inside a single range. The lamb reaches for a zinc chelate as well as zinc oxide and adds vitamin C; the turkey stays with straight sulphates throughout. Selenium arrives as sodium selenite on both, the standard and by far the most common choice in dry food.

Lamb at 14% with meat meals at 13%, on maize and barley. No other bag in the range carries a herb tail: cranberry, parsley, turmeric and chamomile each at 100 mg/kg, yucca extract at 120 mg/kg and beta glucans at 300 mg/kg. Owners usually spot the yucca first; it is there for what it does to household smells. Its mineral panel adds vitamin C at 50 mg and a zinc chelate alongside zinc oxide, and the label covers older dogs as well as adults. Moisture is not declared here, so the dry matter figures use the 8% assumed for a dry food, putting protein at 23.9% and fat at 11.4%.

Both varieties are sold in 2kg bags. When we checked, there was no price on record for this range, so no per-kilo figure or daily cost appears below.

A 15kg adult in moderate condition needs about 840 kcal a day, using the standard maintenance estimate of 110 kcal × bodyweight^0.75. That comes to roughly 243 grams a day of the lamb. The turkey works out at 255 grams.