Ruff's Recipes Adult Wet: Turkey Dinner review

All three recipes reach our Excellent band. The typical adult wet food does too, since our scoring treats wet kindly. What counts here is holding that line while naming every animal and printing a figure beside it. The three finish tightly grouped, with the two 390g recipes level and Turkey Dinner a whisker behind them. Transparency reads Outstanding on all three and value Excellent. Nutritional balance is Outstanding bar the turkey hash, protein and processing Excellent bar the turkey dinner, so the range is evenly built with no spike and no weakness.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey & Pork (60%) (Turkey 30%, Pork 30%), Courgette (4%), Dried Spelt (2%, equivalent to 4% Spelt), Dried Tomato (2%, equivalent to 4% Tomato), Minerals, Linseed, Dried Herbs & Botanicals (0.2%) (Seaweed, Nettle, Rosemary, Bay, Dill, Mint, Oregano, Thyme, Chamomile, Turmeric, Reishi Mushroom, Valerian Root), Chicory (a source of Inulin), Dried Blueberry.

Freshly prepared meat opens each list, so the meat went into the pot fresh and not as a dried meal, and every entry carries its own percentage. Pork at 61.1% does all the work in Hearty Hog Roast, while the other two split their 60% or so between a pair of animals. That translates into protein of 40.0% of dry matter in the pork recipe, 34.6% in the hash and 50.0% in Turkey Dinner. The last of those is a genuinely high reading for a food fed from a small pack.

The plants here are few, and each one is named. Peas at 5.2%, green beans at 5.2% and courgette at 4% take the vegetable slot. Barley at 2.6%, quinoa at 0.6% and dried spelt at 2% carry the grain. A little sweetness comes from dried apple, from sweet potato and from dried tomato. Even the starchiest of the three lands at an estimated 15.4% of dry matter carbohydrate, just under the 15.8% typical for adult wet food, and Turkey Dinner drops all the way to 2.7%.

Ruff's finishes every one of its ranges the same way. Flaxseed or linseed brings omega-3, chicory root at 0.13% supplies prebiotic FOS, and dried blueberry follows. Last comes a herb and botanical blend at 0.2%, taking in seaweed, nettle, turmeric, reishi mushroom and valerian root. Each of those is at trace level, seaweed at 0.05% and rosemary at 0.015% giving the scale, so they are a garnish and not a working dose. Meat is what you are buying here, and meat is where the analysis keeps its weight.

The added panels differ between the recipes, which is worth a look. Hearty Hog Roast and Tasty Turkey Hash both declare vitamin A at 3,300 IU and vitamin D3 at 275 IU per kilo. The minerals are zinc at 27.5 mg, iron at 13.2 mg, manganese at 2.2 mg, copper at 1.32 mg and selenium at 0.044 mg. Turkey Dinner's panel is far shorter, naming zinc at 15.3 mg, manganese at 3.2 mg and iodine at 0.5 mg, with no vitamins at all. The two are not built to the same specification even though they sit under one range name.

Turkey and pork at 30% each in a smaller 150g pack, with courgette at 4%, dried spelt and dried tomato at 2% apiece, and linseed and chicory to finish. Once the water comes out it is the most protein-dense recipe in the range at 50.0% of dry matter, with estimated carbohydrate right down at 2.7%. At 81 kcal per 100g it is also the lightest. Its added panel is the shortest of the three, with zinc, manganese and iodine named and no vitamins at all.

The 390g size is £7.15 a kilo and the smaller 150g size is £9.27 a kilo.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat between 750 and 1037 grams a day depending on which recipe you choose. That works out at between £5.36 and £9.61, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Turkey Dinner's own label guide puts a 12kg to 25kg dog on 825 to 1500 grams a day, which brackets that estimate neatly.