Paleo Ridge Essentials: Chicken Dinner review

All six recipes reach our Outstanding band, which is where the typical raw food lands as well. Raw sets a higher bar than any other field we score, so holding that standard across a whole everyday range is a real achievement rather than a formality. Protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value read Outstanding on every one of the six.

What does the earning is the plain arithmetic of the labels. Four fifths of each recipe is animal, itemised down to the kidney and liver percentages. Each vegetable is named in its own right, with no catch-all word covering them, and both calcium and energy are declared outright. So little separates the recipes that your dog's own preferences are a better guide than any ranking.

Ingredients, as declared: 40% Chicken Meat with Bone, 23% Chicken Gizzards/Chicken Hearts, 19.5% Seasonal Veg (inc. Broccoli, Carrot, Kale, Parsnips, Cauliflower or Cabbage), 12% Chicken Offals, 5% Beef Kidney, 0.5% Extra Virgin Olive Oil

The build never changes. A bone-in cut and a tripe or a second muscle meat share the bulk of the 80%, and organs come in at the tail as kidney and liver. The vegetables take 19.5%, and a splash of extra virgin olive oil closes each label. Every entry carries a percentage, so you can see exactly where the weight goes without doing any guesswork.

Tripe appears in four of the six recipes and it is the ingredient raw feeders tend to prize most. Green tripe, unbleached, arrives with a gut's own enzymes and friendly bacteria still in it, plus a generous helping of protein and fat, and dogs treat it as a delicacy. When tripe takes the lead, the poultry alongside it supplies the bone, and that is how these recipes get their calcium without any added mineral.

The vegetable fraction is honest about being seasonal. Broccoli, carrot, kale, parsnips, cauliflower and cabbage are all named as possibilities, so the exact composition shifts through the year while the total stays at 19.5%. Carrot brings vitamin A and soluble fibre, the brassicas bring antioxidants and a little roughage, and none of it is there to bulk the pack out, since the meat percentage is fixed regardless.

Extra virgin olive oil at 0.5% is a small entry that earns its place. It is a good source of vitamin E and useful for skin and coat, and choosing extra virgin over a generic vegetable oil is a deliberate step up. Beyond it there is no vitamin or mineral premix in the range, so the organ meats and the vegetables are carrying the micronutrition between them.

The analyses read like meat with a modest plant share behind it. Protein converts to between 44.4% and 68.4% of dry matter, and fat to between 21.1% and 51.9%. Carbohydrate stays at or under 4.6%, comfortably below the 5.0% typical of raw food even with vegetables in the mix. Calcium is declared on every recipe, running from 1.3% to 2.68% of dry matter, and the energy figures are the maker's own, not estimates.

The most poultry-heavy of the six: chicken meat with bone at 40%, gizzards and hearts at 23% and chicken offals at 12%, with 5% beef kidney the only entry from another animal. Fat converts to 37.0% of dry matter at 154 kcal per 100g, so it feeds in middling portions.

The whole range is £4.98 a kilo, in 500g packs.

Take a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, whose maintenance needs work out at about 840 kcal a day on the standard estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75). Across this range that is between 457 and 857 grams of food, so £2.27 to £4.27 a day, with the leaner recipes feeding in the larger portions.