Vale Pet Foods Vale RAW Purely Minces: Venison review

Four of the five settle in our Outstanding band with the duck a step behind them in Excellent, so little separates them but the animal involved. Raw is the hardest category to stand out in on our scoring, and the typical raw food already earns our Outstanding band. Most of this set stands level with that crowd, which says a good deal for what is in the tub. Protein and processing reads Outstanding right across the range, and transparency is Outstanding on the duck with Excellent on the other four.

Ingredients, as declared: 80% Venison, 10% Venison Bone, 10% Venison Offal (Kidney, Liver)

The build is identical in all five tubs and it is over in three entries: 80% meat, 10% bone from the same animal, 10% offal from the same animal. Nothing vegetable, nothing pressed from a seed and nothing powdered goes in behind them. Labels this short are rare even in raw, and they leave very little for a buyer to interpret.

Ground bone is doing the calcium work here, the way it does in any properly built raw mince, and the offal share is a genuine one, not a token. The beef splits its 10% into liver and kidney at 5% each. The chicken and the venison name kidney and liver inside the offal line, and the duck and turkey list offal without breaking it down. Organs carry a large share of an animal's micronutrition, so that tenth matters more than its size suggests.

There is no vitamin and mineral premix, and no printed panel standing behind the decision either. Bone and organ meats carry much of what a dog needs, and that is the whole-prey case these minces are built on. The label does ask for a measure of trust, since it never shows its working. Owners who prefer to see the arithmetic will want to ask Vale directly.

The analyses read like meat, which is exactly right for this shopping list. Protein converts to 70.7% of dry matter on the venison, 60.5% on the beef, 58.9% on the chicken. Carbohydrate reads zero, because there is nothing starchy on the label to make any from. Moisture is undeclared on the beef, chicken, turkey and venison, so those conversions run on the 69.6% figure we assume for raw food. The calorie figures are estimates, not declarations.

The duck is the odd label out. It declares moisture at 25.0%, far drier than a raw mince usually reads, and estimating carbohydrate by difference against that number throws up 36.0% where the ingredients offer nothing to make it from. Read that tub by its ingredients rather than its panel: duck, duck bone and duck offal, built exactly like its four siblings.

Crude ash is the other figure that wanders. The chicken declares 4.5% and the beef 0.9% on identical 10% bone, and since ash is largely the mineral fraction coming off that bone, the two cannot both be typical of the grind. It changes nothing about what is in the tub, but it is a reminder to lean on the ingredients list when the panels disagree.

Venison with its own bone and offal, kidney and liver named, and the only unfamiliar meat on the menu. Protein converts to 70.7% of dry matter, the highest figure declared in the range, while fat stays at 6.8% as fed, so it feeds lean and in large portions. When the everyday meats have caused a reaction, this is the tub to try first.

The chicken is £4.75 a kilo, the duck and the turkey are £5.30, the beef is £5.75 and the venison is £7.95. Every mince comes in a 1kg tub.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition means about 840 kcal a day, using the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. A day's feeding then works out at £1.36 for the duck, £1.79 for the beef, £2.89 for the chicken, £3.58 for the turkey and £5.02 for the venison. That spread comes from energy density, not from the shelf figure, since the leaner minces feed in much larger portions. The duck's day rate rests on the declared analysis noted above, so treat it as the softest of the five.