Waita Freeze Dried Complete Food: Chicken Recipe review

All three recipes reach our Outstanding band, close enough together that the animal should matter more to your choice than the order does. Protein and processing, nutritional balance and transparency all read Outstanding on each of them, and so does value, which is what a label made entirely of named animal parts earns. Freeze dried is demanding company, since its typical member is an Outstanding one, so sitting alongside that mark means an exceptionally clean recipe.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken Meat 63%, Chicken with Bone 12.2%, Chicken Egg Yolk Cubes 7%, Chicken Heart 6%, Chicken Breast 5%, Chicken Liver 3%, Chicken Gizzard 3%. Chicken Meat 63%, Chicken with Bone 12.2%, Chicken Egg Yolk Cubes 7%, Chicken Heart 6%, Chicken Breast 5%, Chicken Liver 3%, Chicken Gizzard 3%

Freeze drying is the gentlest way to make a food shelf stable. The ingredients are frozen and the ice drawn off as vapour, so nothing is cooked at the temperatures a kibble sees and the meat keeps much of its structure. Water at the bowl brings it back towards the raw meal it began as, and even fed dry the pieces are light and fragile rather than hard.

Every recipe is built from named parts of one animal. The Chicken runs meat at 63%, chicken with bone at 12.2%, egg yolk cubes at 7%, heart at 6%, breast at 5%, liver at 3% and gizzard at 3%. The Duck takes meat at 62%, bone at 12.2%, blood and liver at 7% each, heart at 4%, a duck and pumpkin cube at 4% and breast at 3%. The Rabbit is the shortest of them, meat at 65%, bone at 13%, lung at 7.2%, blood at 7% and liver at 7%.

Two of those entries deserve a word. Blood, on the Duck and the Rabbit, is an unusual thing to see declared. It is rich in iron and in highly digestible protein. Gizzard, on the Chicken, is muscular stomach tissue. It is lean and full of the connective protein that supports joints and skin. Neither is filler, and both are the sort of ingredient a home raw feeder would go looking for.

Bone at between 12.2% and 13% is the mineral source in all three, ground in with the meat so calcium and phosphorus arrive in something close to the balance the animal carried them in. The labels stop short of printing a calcium percentage, which is the single figure worth asking Waita for if you are feeding a puppy of a large breed.

The analysis reads exactly as the lists promise. Protein converts to 56.5% of dry matter on the Chicken and Duck and 57.6% on the Rabbit, with fat between 21.7% and 23.9%. The carbohydrate estimate falls between 5.5% and 8.8%, and most of that is arithmetic, not starch you could point at. Energy runs from 451 to 478 kcal per 100g, which is why the daily portions look so small next to a bowl of kibble.

The pack prints its additive panel dose by dose while the online summary only names the categories, so it is worth reading the bag itself. Taurine at 1000mg per kilo is there for the heart, and choline chloride at 2500mg for liver and nerve function. The gut gets prebiotics and live cultures too: mannan oligosaccharides at 25mg with xylo-oligosaccharides at 25mg, then Bacillus subtilis at 3 billion CFU with Saccharomyces cerevisiae at 1 billion. Vitamins A at 20000IU and D3 at 800IU head a full vitamin group, and selenium arrives in the yeast form as well as the sodium selenite one.

The Chicken is the longest label of the three, and the only one with a second animal ingredient in it. Egg yolk cubes at 7% bring concentrated fat and protein along with micronutrients, and they are also the reason this recipe cannot serve a strict chicken-only trial. Gizzard at 3% is the other point of difference. It is the most energy dense of the three at 478 kcal per 100g, and its ash figure of 6.5% of dry matter is the lowest.

Per kilo, the Chicken Recipe is £47.49, the Duck £48.33 and the Rabbit £49.99. All three come in 400g and 1.2kg packs, with a 20g tasting pack alongside them.

Assume roughly 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is about 176 grams a day of the Chicken and 186 grams of either the Duck or the Rabbit. A day of the Chicken is about £8.35, the Duck £9.00 and the Rabbit £9.31.