Orlando Natural Complete: Turkey & Vegetables 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, Turkey Meal 15%, Meat Meal, Rice, Barley, Pea Flour 4%, Beet Pulp 4%, Poultry Fat, Poultry Gravy, Linseed, Minerals, Kelp 0.2%, Chicory 0.01%.

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.

Turkey meal at 15% leads the animal content, ahead of an unnamed meat meal, with rice and barley joining the maize and pea flour at 4% adding a little plant protein. Kelp at 0.2% is the distinctive entry, a mineral-rich seaweed, with chicory at 0.01% behind it. On paper this is the meatier read of the two: protein converts to 26.4% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 47.8%, both a step ahead of the lamb. It is labelled for adults only, and its trace minerals come as sulphates throughout.

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.