Rawr Freeze-Dried Complete: Chicken and Wild-Caught Salmon review

All three recipes land in our Outstanding band with very little between them, so the animal is what should decide. Protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value come back Outstanding on all three, which is not something we get to write often. Freeze-dried is demanding company as well, because the typical freeze-dried food is an Outstanding one in its own right, and this range holds its place in that field rather than trailing behind it.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 80% (Raw Chicken Breast 70%, Raw Chicken Liver 10%), Raw Salmon 6%, Carrots 4%, Pumpkin 4%, Collagen 2%, Cellulose Powder, Hydrolysed Yeast, Linseed Oil, Salmon Oil, Corn Oil

Freeze-drying is the whole argument here. Meat is frozen and the water drawn off under vacuum, with no baking involved, so the raw structure survives the process and only weight is lost. None of the three labels declares moisture, so the dry matter column works from the 5% a freeze-dried food normally carries. On that basis protein converts to between 50.5% and 58.9%, and the carbohydrate estimate never rises above 6.3%.

The meat itemisation is unusually generous. The Gourmet Beef splits its 85% into raw beef at 55%, heart at 21% and liver at 10%. The Gourmet Chicken splits its own 85% into breast at 70% with liver and heart at 8% each. The Chicken and Wild-Caught Salmon runs breast at 70% and liver at 10% before its salmon. Much of an animal's micronutrition actually sits in the liver and the heart. Naming them separately is worth more than a single headline number would be.

The plant side is small and honestly labelled. Carrots and pumpkin do the work on two recipes, sweet potato appears on two, and blueberries and broccoli show up only on the Gourmet Chicken. Nothing here is pretending to be the meal. These are entries of a few percent apiece, in for fibre and colour and not for bulk.

Two entries earn a plainer word. Cellulose powder is purified plant fibre, giving bulk at almost no calories. It is a refined ingredient though, a long way from the fibre inside a whole vegetable, and its plant of origin goes unnamed. Hydrolysed yeast is yeast broken down so the cell wall fractions are available, the part that acts as food for gut bacteria. It is in there on purpose, and it is no filler.

The oils are chosen for different jobs. Linseed oil on two recipes brings plant omega 3, salmon oil on all three brings the marine form that dogs use more readily, and corn oil sits behind both as a general fat. Collagen at 2% appears only on the Chicken and Wild-Caught Salmon, a connective tissue protein more often seen in a supplement than a bowl.

The added panel is a chelate panel: zinc, manganese, copper and iron all arrive as glycine chelates, the form usually chosen because it survives digestion better than an oxide. One gap is worth flagging. The Gourmet Beef and Gourmet Chicken both print vitamin D3 at 519 IU. The Chicken and Wild-Caught Salmon lists vitamins A and E and no D3 at all. Put that to the maker before drawing a conclusion from it.

No other recipe here puts a second animal on the front. Chicken takes 80%, split as raw breast at 70% and liver at 10%, with raw salmon at 6% behind it and collagen at 2% further down, which no other recipe carries. Carrots and pumpkin at 4% each fill the plant fraction. Protein converts to 55.8% of dry matter at 405 kcal per 100g, putting it between its two stablemates for richness, and it is the one label whose vitamin panel prints no D3.

The Chicken and Wild-Caught Salmon and the Gourmet Chicken are both £49.98 a kilo, and the Gourmet Beef is £54.98 a kilo. All three come in 175g and 600g packs.

Work from about 840 kcal a day, the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75 for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition. That dog gets through roughly 200 to 212 grams a day, depending on the recipe. That puts a day between £10.37 and £10.97, with the richest recipe feeding in the smallest portions.