Wainwright's Complete Freeze Dried Raw: Chicken review

Our Outstanding band holds both recipes, and they finish level. The animal that suits your dog is the thing to choose on. That puts them right alongside the typical freeze dried food, which is Outstanding company to be keeping. Protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value all read Outstanding on each.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (60%), Potato (15%), Sweet Potato (6%), Peas (6%), Carrot (5%), Apple (3%), Pear (2%)

Freeze drying takes a different road to every other dried food. Instead of baking or extruding, the food is frozen and the ice drawn straight off as vapour, so the protein is never cooked hard and the structure of the meat survives more or less intact. What comes out is light, crumbly and shelf stable, and adding water at the bowl brings it much closer to the raw meal it started as.

Meat at 60% is a single species on each label, and the allergen reading backs that up with one animal and no hidden second. Neither recipe carries an unnamed fat. There is no fish oil and no meat meal either. That is exactly the kind of list an owner running an elimination trial needs. The one caveat is in the additive panel: the zinc is chelated to protein hydrolysates, and their source is never named.

The plant side is larger than the freeze dried norm and it is all named. Potato at 15% and sweet potato at 6% are the starches. Peas at 6% add plant protein along with vitamins C and K, folate and fibre, carrot at 5% brings soluble fibre and antioxidants, and apple at 3% and pear at 2% round the list off. The peas deserve an honest word. Whole, in moderation, they are a genuinely useful ingredient, though some of the protein on the analysis comes from them rather than from the animal.

Because moisture goes undeclared, the dry matter figures work from an assumed 5%, which is the usual reading for a freeze dried food. On that basis the beef converts to 35.7% protein and 25.9% fat, and the chicken to 41.7% protein and 23.8% fat, with the carbohydrate estimate at 29.5% and 25.1% respectively. Energy is high either way: 476 kcal per 100g for the beef, 468 for the chicken. Portions come out small and are easy to overshoot.

The added panel is short and properly dosed: vitamin A at 2500IU, D3 at 250IU and E at 50mg per kilo. Zinc at 15mg, iron at 10mg and the rest of the trace elements sit behind them. Selenium comes as selenised yeast at 0.02mg. Of the two forms Europe allows, that is the better absorbed one. The only technological additive declared is antioxidants.

Chicken at 60% gives this recipe the higher protein of the pair, converting to 41.7% of dry matter against the beef's 35.7%, with a slightly lower carbohydrate estimate at 25.1%. For most dogs chicken is the most digestible and the most palatable starting point. The one caution is its very popularity: intolerance to chicken turns up more often than intolerance to any other meat.

Both recipes work out at £36.99 a kilo in the 1kg bag, £37.98 a kilo in the 500g and £38.60 a kilo in the 150g.

Assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats roughly 176 grams of the beef a day. The chicken works out at about 179 grams. At the 1kg rate that comes to about £6.53 a day on the beef and £6.64 a day on the chicken.