Southend Dog Training Southend Dog Puppy Raw Food: Chicken with Tripe review

Both recipes come out in our Outstanding band and finish level with one another. Our scoring is toughest on raw, and raw puppy food is tougher again. The typical food in that group reaches our Outstanding band. Reaching that mark rather than sitting under it says a good deal about these two, and it is the label that earns it rather than any softness in the competition.

Protein and processing reads Outstanding on both, as you would expect from a list that is nine parts animal, and value reads Outstanding alongside it. Transparency reads Outstanding too. The chicken also earns an Outstanding for nutritional balance where the beef reads Excellent, on the strength of its leaner, more protein heavy analysis.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 90% (Chicken with Bone, Chicken Heart, Chicken Liver), Butternut Squash, Green Vegetables, Blueberry, Salmon Oil, Chicory Root, Kelp

Ninety per cent of each recipe is one animal, and the parts are itemised on the label. The beef brings bone, heart, tripe, liver and kidney; the chicken brings bone, heart and liver. Organ meat is where much of the micronutrition in a carcass actually lives, and tripe in particular is rich in protein and easily digested, with the unprocessed green form carrying its own digestive enzymes.

With bone ground through both recipes, the calcium is meant to come from the animal itself and not from a mineral premix. That is the classic raw approach, and the reason there is no vitamin panel on the pack. Neither label prints a calcium figure though. It is the number a puppy owner most wants, particularly for a big breed with a year of growing ahead of it. Ash hints at the bone content: 13.7% of dry matter on the beef, 10.7% on the chicken. Ash is no substitute for the figure itself.

The remaining tenth is plant matter with a purpose. Butternut squash and blueberry bring gentle fibre and antioxidants, and chicory root supplies inulin as a prebiotic. Kelp is a natural source of iodine and other minerals, which matters in a recipe with nothing added from a premix. The one loose entry is green vegetables, a broad heading that could cover a lot of ground, and we would happily see the individual vegetables named.

Salmon oil appears in both recipes and hemp oil is added to the beef, so oils look after the omega 3 side and the meat does not have to. Fish is therefore present in both, worth knowing if you reached for a single meat recipe in order to avoid it.

The analyses read exactly as raw analyses should. The beef converts to 35.9% protein of dry matter and 40.7% fat, the chicken to 52.1% and 32.9%, with carbohydrate at 0.6% and 1.1% against 3.2% for raw puppy food generally. The beef also carries considerably more fibre, 9.1% of dry matter against 3.2% in the chicken, which follows the vegetable fraction and nothing added.

This is the leaner recipe by some distance, protein converting to 52.1% of dry matter and fat to 32.9%, at an estimated 130 kcal per 100g. Portions run larger, and it suits a puppy that puts weight on readily. Worth knowing before you order: the recipe is named for tripe, but the itemised list gives chicken with bone, chicken heart and chicken liver only, with no tripe among them. If tripe is the reason you were choosing it, ask the maker first.

The beef with tripe is £4.92 a kilo and the chicken with tripe £4.48. Both are sold frozen in tubs, in boxes from 1kg upwards, with a 10kg box holding 20 tubs and the largest box running to 50kg.

Puppy portions are set as a share of bodyweight, not as a fixed adult ration, so the maker's chart is the place to start. On the beef, a 5 kg puppy is given 250 g to 400 g a day. On the chicken the chart is a single figure, 80 g a day at 1 kg of bodyweight and 800 g at 10 kg, split across the day and reviewed as the puppy grows.