Scrumpf Complete Freeze Dried Raw review

This lands in our Outstanding band, with protein and processing and nutritional balance both reading Outstanding. Transparency does the same, and value keeps their company. Freeze dried is a demanding field to be judged in, because the typical freeze dried food is itself an Outstanding one, and this recipe holds the middle of that company comfortably. The carbohydrate estimate is a good part of why. At 4.3% of dry matter it sits well under the 9.1% a freeze dried food usually carries, so very little of the bag is doing anything but feeding the dog.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh Duck (85%), Fresh Carrots (3%), Fresh Courgette (3%), Fresh Green Beans (2%), Fresh Pear (2%), Yoghurt (1%), Bamboo Fibre (1%), Chicory Inulin (1%), Yeast Products (1%), Dehydrated Fruit Blend (Strawberries, Blueberries, Blackberries, Cranberries, Acerola Cherry, Grape Seed Extract, Pomegranate) (0.25%)

Freeze drying is a gentler process than it sounds. The food is frozen first, then the ice is drawn off under vacuum without ever passing through heat. What is left keeps the structure and the nutrients of the raw material, and loses only water. Moisture is declared at 5.0%, and the finished food carries 480 kcal per 100g, among the most concentrated ways a dog can be fed.

Fresh duck at 85% is the recipe. That percentage is counted before drying, which means the water it contained has since gone, so duck accounts for even more of what ends up in the bowl than the label figure implies. Duck is easy for most dogs to digest, tends to do well in taste tests, and is uncommon enough that plenty of dogs meet it for the first time here. Protein converts to 48.4% of dry matter and fat to 33.7%.

The plant side is short and specific. Fresh carrots and courgette come in at 3% each, and green beans and pear at 2%. Behind them sits a dehydrated fruit blend at a quarter of a percent, with strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, acerola cherry, grape seed extract and pomegranate inside it. Grape seed extract sometimes worries owners who know that whole grapes are not for dogs. The extract is a different thing, and it is here as an antioxidant.

Four functional entries follow at 1% apiece. Yoghurt brings a fermented dairy element and chicory inulin feeds the gut bacteria. Yeast products supply the cell wall fractions that do similar work, and bamboo fibre is an inert insoluble fibre that adds bulk without adding anything else. Nothing here is padding out the recipe; between them they account for a very small share of the bag.

The analysis reads exactly as the list promises. With protein at 48.4% and fat at 33.7% of dry matter and the carbohydrate estimate at 4.3%, this is meat and its water, not a meal built around a starch. Ash at 10.4% of dry matter is where the mineral content shows through, consistent with a food this heavily animal based.

The added panel covers vitamins A, D3 and E, choline chloride at 200mg and a full run of trace elements. The trace elements come as sulphates, oxides and carbonates, the conventional route, with no chelates among them. Selenium is sodium selenite, and only two forms are allowed at all. Worth noting for a puppy household: no calcium percentage is printed anywhere on the label, so growth feeding leans on the maker's guidance rather than on a figure you can read.

£56.67 a kilo, sold in a single 600g pack.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 175 grams a day, taking roughly 840 kcal a day from the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. That puts a day at around £9.92. A puppy sits outside that arithmetic entirely, since a growing dog is fed to the shape of its own growth curve and the daily amount moves as it fills out.