ProDog Smart Chubs: Pork & Duck review

All five flavours sit level with one another in our Outstanding band, and nothing separates them beyond the animals involved. Raw keeps the strongest company of any format we score, and the typical raw food sits in our Outstanding band. This range holds that same mark, with protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value all reading Outstanding.

Ingredients, as declared: 49% British Duck Meat and Ground Bone, 40% British Pork Meat, 5.5% Pork Liver (Offal), 5% Pork Kidney (Offal), 0.5% Boost

The construction never wavers. Minced meat and ground bone lead every label, offal follows where the flavour carries it, and the only entry that is not animal is the 0.5% of Boost at the end. Everything is named and everything is percentaged, which is exactly the honesty raw feeders shop for.

Ground bone runs through the range, and in recipes with no added mineral list it is the bone doing the calcium work. The offal does real work here. Liver and kidney turn up in most flavours, and lung, tripe and trachea appear where the recipe suits. Much of an animal's micronutrition lives in its organs.

Boost, the 0.5% that closes every label, is ProDog's own supplement, included at 2.5g per 500g of food. The maker describes it as built mostly from whole food ingredients with a small amount of added nutrients for balance. Worth knowing: the individual vitamin and mineral declarations behind it are not printed on the food's page, so that part of the recipe is taken on the maker's description rather than read off a panel.

The analysis reads like the label promises. Across the range protein converts to between 39.9% and 67.4% of dry matter, with fat between 27.3% and 42.5%. Carbohydrate never passes 6.7%, and most of that is estimate, since nothing starchy appears anywhere. This is meat in a casing, not a meal with meat in it.

No chub keeps to one animal, and the pairing is the point: a lead species with a partner carrying complementary cuts. The offal does not always come from the headline animals either, with the Three Bird Mince taking its liver and kidney from beef. Dogs on a strict exclusion plan need each list read flavour by flavour, while dogs with no such worries get a rotation that is very easy to run.

Duck meat and ground bone at 49% with pork meat at 40%, plus pork liver and kidney. Chicken and beef are both absent from this label, and no other chub in the range can say that. For a dog steering around the common meats, this is where to land.

Every flavour comes in 450g chubs. Per kilo, the Beef & Lamb, Chicken & Haddock, Chicken & Lamb and Three Bird Mince are £4.78, and the Pork & Duck is £5.04.

As a guide, feeding works out at between £2.21 and £3.16 a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The spread follows energy density: the richer chubs feed in smaller portions, so a day on the Beef & Lamb costs less than a day on the leaner Chicken & Haddock.