Pure Pet Food: Lamb review

Two bands hold the seven, Outstanding for five of them and Excellent for the Herring and the Lamb. The Chicken leads the range on our scoring with the Salmon just behind it, and protein and processing reads Outstanding on all seven, so the recipes sit closer together than that split suggests. Let your dog's protein history, and any grain or fish avoidance, make the choice here. The score will not settle it.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb (30%, including Dehydrated Lamb 25%, Freeze Dried Lamb 5%), Potato, Brown Rice, Carrot (8.2%), Chicken Fat (5%) Vegetable Stock (4%), Egg (4%), Coconut (4%), Sweet Potato (3%), Minerals, Peas (1.5%), Salmon Oil (1%), Spinach (0.6%), Algae (0.15%, source of Omega 3), Glucosamine (0.05%), Chondroitin (0.05%).

Air-drying is the range's whole argument. The meat is dried gently, never extruded as a dough at high heat, and the labels show their working. Every headline splits into a dehydrated share, a freeze dried share and, where one is used, a named fat. Dehydrated meat arrives with its water already gone. So a 45% chicken or 46% turkey headline puts far more animal in the bowl than the identical figure would where the meat goes in fresh. The analysis bears that out, with protein converting to between 29.5% and 44.3% of dry matter across the range.

Potato is the constant base. Brown rice joins it in the Duck, Herring, Lamb and Turkey, while the Chicken, Game and Salmon keep grain off the label and use pea protein instead. Pea protein deserves an honest word. It is a plant protein in concentrated form, and it lifts the analysis. So in those three recipes, some of the protein figure comes from the pea and not from the named animal.

The fatty acid work is more varied than most ranges bother with. Algae at 0.15% is declared on every label as an omega 3 source, and salmon oil runs through most of the recipes. Hemp oil arrives at 5% in the two fish options, while the Turkey and Game carry linseed instead. That is precisely what keeps those two labels free of fish.

Every label ends the same way. Glucosamine and chondroitin sit at 0.05% each, and a taurine and L-carnitine pairing is dosed on the added panel, with the L-carnitine at 250mg per kg. Trace minerals come mostly as chelates, a form chosen for better absorption, and each one is dosed in print.

The vegetable fraction is small and honestly labelled. Carrot does the most work, spinach sits at 0.6% on every recipe, and the strawberry, blueberry and broccoli entries at 0.2% are seasoning. A range this transparent about its trace inclusions tends to be trustworthy about its big ones, and here the percentages back the story up.

Lamb at 30% with coconut at 4% and a little sweet potato behind it. Worth noting the chicken fat at 5% and egg at 4% in support: a treat for a lamb-loving dog, though not a chicken-free recipe.

The Game and Lamb recipes work out at £13.62 a kilo. The Chicken, Duck, Herring, Salmon and Turkey come in 1kg packs, while the Game and Lamb are sold through Pure's personalised subscription, portioned to the dog rather than to a fixed pack.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs roughly 216 to 233 grams a day depending on the recipe, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). On the two priced recipes, that works out at about £3.07 a day for the Game and £2.94 a day for the Lamb.