Paleo Ridge Paleo Senior review

Both recipes settle in our Outstanding band, the same place the typical raw food lands, and the pair read Outstanding on protein and processing, on nutritional balance, on transparency and on value. Raw asks more of a recipe than any field we score, and older-dog raw recipes are thin on the ground. A pair that keeps to one animal and still hits that mark is worth noticing.

The credit goes to the labels. The meat side is single species on both, and the offal is itemised rather than hidden behind a general word. Calcium is declared, and the energy content is the maker's own figure rather than an estimate.

Ingredients, as declared: 40% Lamb Tripe, 20% Lamb Lung, 15% Lamb Ribs, 5% Lamb Liver, 5% Lamb Kidney, 4.8% Lamb Heart, 4% Carrot, 4% Broccoli, 2% Kale, 0.2% Reishi Mushroom Tinctures

Both recipes are built the same way, with a soft, palatable lead cut, a bone-bearing entry for calcium, a deep offal section and a small plant share. Around nine tenths of each label is animal, and every part is named down to the percentage, so nothing needs interpreting.

Keeping each recipe to one animal is the range's most useful feature. There is no partner species carrying the bone, no borrowed liver from a different animal and no fish oil slipped in for omega fats. That is rarer than you would think, and it makes both recipes genuinely usable on an exclusion plan.

The offal is generous. Lamb lung, liver, kidney and heart appear on the one label, with turkey liver and heart on the other. Organ meats are where the fat-soluble vitamins, the iron, the copper and the B vitamins really live. In a recipe with no added vitamin or mineral premix, that is exactly where you want the micronutrition coming from.

The plant fraction is small and specific: carrot at 4% for beta carotene and soluble fibre, broccoli at 4% for its antioxidants and kale at 2% for the same. A 0.2% reishi mushroom tincture is a traditional inclusion at trace level. Nothing here is padding the pack, since the plants take a tenth of the bowl between them.

The analyses are lean and protein-forward, converting to 56.0% and 58.6% protein on a dry matter basis with fat at 16.0% and 20.7%. That restraint is deliberate for older dogs, and it means the daily portion is generous. Carbohydrate is the one figure to read carefully. With no starch ingredient on either list, the estimates of 25.2% and 16.9% of dry matter are the by-difference calculation sweeping up everything the analysis does not measure. There is no sugar or cereal in the mince.

The lamb recipe leads with lamb tripe at 40% and lamb lung at 20%, with lamb ribs at 15% carrying the bone, then liver and kidney at 5% each and heart at 4.8%. It is the leaner and lighter of the pair at 98 kcal per 100g with fat converting to 16.0% of dry matter. Tripe makes it the more strongly scented of the two, and that is often exactly what an older dog's appetite responds to.

The lamb recipe is £9.18 a kilo and the turkey is £10.98. Both come in 500g packs.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing about 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), the lamb feeds at roughly 857 grams a day. The turkey feeds at 636 grams. That works out at £7.87 and £6.99 respectively.