Ouzil Fresh Food: Wild Duck review

All six recipes land in our Outstanding band, and every pillar reads Outstanding on every one of them: protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value. Fresh food is strong company by nature and the typical fresh food sits in that same top band, so this range is keeping pace in a category that already sets a high bar. What earns the reading is straightforward enough. A named animal carries three quarters of the tub, organ meat sits inside that figure, and a percentage is printed against every entry right down to the herbs. Nothing in the recipe is there to bulk it out. The differences between the six are matters of protein and richness, so let your dog's history pick, not the order they finish in.

Ingredients, as declared: Duck 75% (including 15% heart & 5% liver), Carrot 8.5%, Green Beans 8.5%, Peas 2.5%, Sweetcorn 0.95%, Linseed oil 0.8%, Ground Egg shell 0.45% Dried Coriander 0.3%, Sunflower Seeds 0.075%, Pumpkin Seeds 0.05%, Dried Blackberry 0.04%, Nettle 0.04%, Seaweed 0.025%, Sage 0.02%, Thyme 0.02%, Reishi 0.015%, Organic Spirulina 0.015%.

Fresh food changes the arithmetic of a label. Moisture runs from 65.0% on the Turkey Feast to 71.9% on the Beef, so a portion looks a great deal bigger than a scoop of kibble and carries between 132 and 167 kcal per 100g. That is the format behaving as it should rather than the recipe being thin, and it is why the dry matter column tells you more here than the front of the pack does.

Each recipe opens with the headline animal at 75%, and 15% heart plus 5% liver are counted inside that number. Organ meat is where a carcass keeps much of its copper, its B vitamins and its vitamin A. Seeing it pinned to a fixed share on all six labels beats the word offal drifting about in a list.

The plant side is short and seasonal in feel. Carrot, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, butternut squash, pumpkin, red pepper and swede do the bulk of the work depending on the recipe, with apple and cranberry as the fruit entries. Linseed oil appears on every label as the omega 3 source, giving the plant form of those fats, which does good work without being the same molecule an oily fish would bring.

There is no separate additives panel, and that is a deliberate choice: the micronutrient work sits inside the composition. Calcium comes from ground egg shell. The seaweed carries iodine and a range of trace minerals. Filling in around them are nettle, sage, thyme, reishi, spirulina, dried blackberry, plus the sunflower and pumpkin seeds, each declared at fractions of a percent. The upside is that you can see exactly where every nutrient comes from. The trade is that no vitamin or mineral figures are printed, so there is no calcium number to hold against a growth chart.

Across the six, protein converts to between 36.5% and 55.1% of dry matter, which is meat-led territory by any reading. The carbohydrate estimate swings much further: 0.0% of dry matter on the Beef, 24.8% on the Turkey Feast. That swing simply tracks how starchy each recipe's vegetables happen to be.

Duck at 75%, with carrot and green beans at 8.5% each, peas at 2.5% and a whisper of sweetcorn at 0.95%. No recipe in the range carries more protein: it converts to 55.1% of dry matter, while the carbohydrate estimate stays right down at 3.3%. Weight for weight it is on the lighter side at 138 kcal per 100g, so portions run a shade larger.

Per kilo, the Beef and the Pork & Apple are £8.05, the Turkey Feast and the Wild Duck £8.40, the Sausage Casserole £8.55 and the Wild Venison £9.50. All six come in 250g, 600g and 1000g packs.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats roughly 503 to 635 grams a day depending on the recipe. That rests on about 840 kcal a day, which is what the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75 gives a dog that size. That lands between £4.05 and £6.03 a day, with the lighter recipes asking for the larger portions.