Paleo Ridge Classic: Beef and Duck review

Every one of the sixteen recipes lands in our Outstanding band, and the scores sit so close together that nothing meaningful separates them. Nothing on our scoring competes in a fiercer field than raw, and the typical raw food reaches our Outstanding band, so this range holds that mark too. Across the board, protein and processing reads Outstanding, and so do nutritional balance and transparency.

Ingredients, as declared: 30% Beef Heart, 30% Beef Butchery Trimmings, 30% Duck Meat with Bone, 5% Beef Liver, 5% Beef Kidney

The construction is the same wherever you look. A lead muscle meat or tripe takes the biggest share, a bone-in cut follows to supply the calcium, and liver and kidney finish at 5% each. Every entry is a named animal part with a percentage beside it. That is the level of plain speaking raw feeders shop for, and very few labels of any kind manage it.

Tripe runs through a good half of the range, and it is there for more than bulk. Unbleached green tripe carries the digestive enzymes and bacteria of the animal's own gut. Protein and fat are both plentiful in it, and dogs find it hard to refuse. Where tripe leads, the bone comes from the partner animal instead, usually organic chicken, duck or turkey meat with bone.

Organ meats here are a proper part of the meal, never a garnish. Liver and kidney appear at 5% each on most recipes, and the chicken and duck recipes go further with hearts and gizzards taking the middle of the list. Much of an animal's vitamin and mineral content actually lives in the organs, and in a range with no added premix anywhere they are doing that job on their own.

The analyses read exactly as meat-only recipes should. Protein converts to between 45.5% and 75.6% of dry matter, fat to between 22.2% and 48.5%, and carbohydrate is at or near zero on every single recipe, because nothing starchy is present to provide any. Energy runs from 88.5 kcal per 100g on the leanest to 192 kcal on the richest, which is a wide spread and the main reason portions differ so much between recipes.

A few labels are worth reading twice if you are excluding a meat. The pork and chicken recipe takes its liver and kidney from beef, and so does the wild venison and duck. The kangaroo recipe brings in three animals, and the venison, beef tripe and duck does the same. Dogs with nothing to avoid get a very easy rotation out of all this; dogs on an exclusion plan need each list checked individually.

An even three-way split: beef heart at 30%, beef butchery trimmings at 30% and duck meat with bone at 30%, with beef liver and kidney closing it out. Heart is a working muscle, not an organ in the offal sense. That makes this one of the more substantial recipes in the range at 150.8 kcal per 100g, with protein converting to 59.2% of dry matter.

Per kilo, the beef tripe and chicken, beef tripe and duck, beef tripe and turkey, lamb tripe and chicken, lamb tripe and duck and lamb tripe and turkey recipes are all £4.99. The beef heart, tripe and chicken is £5.99, the venison, beef tripe and duck £6.39, the beef and duck £6.99 and the pork and chicken £7.29. The lamb tripe, kangaroo and chicken is £7.69, the chicken £7.78, the turkey £7.89, the duck £7.98, the lamb breast and heart £8.49 and the wild venison and duck £11.18. Pack sizes vary by recipe, with 1kg the most common and 500g and 250g packs on several of them.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing about 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), the daily cost runs from £2.67 to £6.38, depending on the recipe. Two things move that figure: what the recipe is per kilo, and how energy dense it is, since the leaner recipes are fed in much larger portions.