Raw Made Simple Complete Raw: Lamb review

Every one of the five finishes in our Outstanding band, which is precisely where the raw field's midpoint lands. This range holds the standard of the strongest category we score. Protein and processing, nutritional balance and transparency all read Outstanding across the five recipes, and value reads Outstanding on every one of them. They also finish level with each other on the headline reading, so the animal, and how rich you want the mince, is the whole of the decision.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb with Bone (30%), Lamb Heart (27%), Beef Green Tripe (20%), Beef Liver (5%), Beef Kidney (3%), Carrot, Green Vegetables, Blueberry, Salmon Oil, & Kelp.

The construction is fixed and the meat is the only variable. A named animal with its bone leads. Beef green tripe takes 20% in four of the five and 10% in the Chicken, while beef liver takes 5% and beef kidney 3% in every recipe. The plant tail is carrot with green vegetables and a berry. Salmon oil and kelp close each list. Percentages run through the animal ingredients and stop at the vegetables, which is the usual convention on a raw label.

That fixed offal and tripe block has one consequence worth stating outright. Beef liver, beef kidney and beef green tripe are in all five recipes, so a dog steering round beef is no better served by the Duck or the Turkey than by the Beef. Building a range this way makes good sense, since every recipe gets the same organ backbone. For anyone running an exclusion diet, it is easily the most important thing on these labels.

The organ share here is properly judged, not a token gesture. Liver at 5% supplies the vitamin A, the iron and the B vitamins. Kidney at 3% adds selenium and more of the B group. Green tripe brings the digestive contents and flora of a grazing animal, which is why it works so reliably on a dog that has gone quiet about food. Hearts appear where the headline animal supplies them, 27% beef heart in the Beef, the same share of lamb heart in the Lamb, and 12% duck heart in the Duck.

Bone sits inside the meat percentage in every recipe, which is how the calcium arrives without a mineral bag. No calcium figure is declared anywhere in the range, so the reading has to come from the composition and not from the analysis. Crude ash gives some indication, running from 3.3% to 12.9% of dry matter, and the recipes carrying the most bone-in meat sit at the top of that spread.

Salmon oil and kelp are the only supplemental entries and no additives panel is published, so the micronutrition rests on the whole ingredients named. The long chain omega 3 fats come from the salmon oil, and the iodine and trace minerals from the kelp. A great many raw makers lean on that same pairing for the same reasons.

The analyses are what raw should look like. Protein converts to between 42.9% and 57.7% of dry matter, fat to between 25.8% and 45.7%, and carbohydrate never exceeds 3.3%, which is a rounding of the unmeasured remainder rather than an ingredient. Energy is estimated rather than declared across the range, running from 120.5 to 188.5 kcal per 100g.

Lamb with bone at 30% and lamb heart at 27%, the most even split of muscle and organ in the range. Its crude ash reads 3.3% of dry matter, and nothing else in the range comes in lower. Protein converts to 50.0% and fat to 36.7%, which puts it in the richer half without being the richest.

£5.50 a kilo across the whole range. Each recipe comes in a 500g tub, the only size listed for any of them.

The standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75) puts a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition at roughly 840 kcal a day. Against our estimated energy figures that runs from 446 grams a day on the Beef to 697 on the Duck, or between £2.45 and £3.83 a day. The richer recipes feed in the smaller portions.