Wolf Tucker Complete Raw Meals: Turkey Meal with Sage review

Our Outstanding band holds all eight of these recipes, and the middle of the raw field settles there too. The range keeps pace with the strongest company we cover. The Chicken Meal shades the rest of them even though it is built exactly the way its stablemates are. That reads as a fine margin on the analysis rather than a different food in the tub.

Across the range protein and processing reads Outstanding on every tub, nutritional balance Outstanding on almost all of them, transparency Excellent on some and Good on the rest, and value Outstanding throughout. The plain honesty of the labelling, which goes as far as printing the total species percentage, is a large part of why. Raw is the fiercest field on our scoring, so holding this position across eight recipes is a genuine result.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey with Bone, Turkey Liver (Total Turkey 90%), Carrot, Green Vegetables (Brocolli, Kale, Cabbage), Apple, Salmon Oil, Kelp

The construction repeats all the way down the range. A named animal arrives with its bone and its liver, the total for that animal is printed as a percentage, and then carrot, green vegetables and apple make up the plant side. Salmon oil and kelp close every label, three tubs add sunflower seed granulate, and that is the full extent of the variation.

With no added vitamins or minerals anywhere, the mineral job falls to ground bone and kelp, and the vitamin job to liver and salmon oil. Liver is in all eight tubs. Nothing else in them is as nutrient dense, and it is rich in vitamin A, B12 and copper. Kelp supplies the iodine. The ash figures show how the bone is spread, running from 2.5% as fed in the Duck Meal up to 10.4% in the Beef Meal, and no calcium figure is printed to read alongside them.

The plant side is more specific than most raw labels manage. Green vegetables comes with its own bracket: broccoli, kale and cabbage. Nothing is left as a loose category. Carrot and apple sit beside them. It is a modest fraction of the bowl and it is there for fibre and antioxidants, not for calories.

Salmon oil earns its place for the omega 3 fats, and it also puts fish in every tub. That will pass most dogs by completely, and matter a great deal to the few that react to fish. Register it before you pick one of the single-meat recipes for an exclusion trial.

What the ingredients promise, the analysis delivers. Carbohydrate lands at zero on six of the eight and no higher than 5.0% of dry matter anywhere. Protein converts to between 31.2% and 58.2% of dry matter, fat to between 25.6% and 51.0%, and moisture runs from 58.4% to 72.7%. That is why the as fed protein figures on these tubs look modest beside a bag of dry food.

Three tubs bring tripe, the stomach lining of a ruminant, and raw feeders rate it for good reason. Unwashed tripe is rich and easy to digest. It brings its own digestive enzymes and friendly bacteria with it. It is also the reason the Chicken and Tripe tub has beef in it.

Turkey with bone and turkey liver at 90%, protein converting to 42.9% of dry matter and fat to 32.9% on an estimated 149 kcal per 100g. The name promises sage, though the printed list runs from the turkey to the kelp without it, so take the herb as a flourish and not a printed ingredient. This one is labelled for adults.

Per kilo, the Chicken and Tripe and the Chicken Meal are £4.58; the Chicken and Beef, the Duck, the Sprats and Tripe and the Turkey are £4.98; and the two beef-led tubs are £5.58. Every recipe is packed in a 500g tub, and Wolf Tucker also sells mixed boxes at 6kg, 12kg and 18kg.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), portions land between 459g and 576g. That works out at £2.19 to £2.87 a day. The leaner tubs feed in larger portions, so the Sprats and Tripe empties fastest and the Beef and Tripe slowest.