Ziwi Peak Air Dried: Venison Recipe review

Both recipes sit in our Outstanding band and finish level with each other. Pick the meat that suits your dog. Air dried food has no cohort of its own for us to measure against, so this reading rests on the labels themselves. They hold up: protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value all read Outstanding on both. What earns that is the sheer proportion of animal, every entry named, and an analysis with barely any carbohydrate left in it.

Ingredients, as declared: 93% Venison and Venison Organs (including Venison, Tripe, Heart, Lung, Liver, Kidney, Bone, Cartilage), 3% New Zealand Green Mussel, Lecithin, Parsley, Dried Apple Pomace, Chicory Inulin, Minerals, Dried Organic Kelp

Air drying is a slow, low heat process rather than a bake, and it is what makes these figures possible. Moisture is down at 9.0%. Weigh out this food against anything wetter and you get far more animal for the same weight. Protein converts to 52.7% and 54.4% of dry matter across the two recipes, with fat at 29.7% on both.

The meat entries include the parts a dog would get from a whole carcass. Tripe, lung, heart, liver, kidney, spleen, bone and cartilage all appear by name inside the headline percentage. Tripe is a particularly welcome sight, since unbleached tripe brings digestive enzymes and friendly bacteria along with its protein. Bone is where the mineral content comes from, so ash at 10.0% is that bone showing in the analysis rather than any filler.

Carbohydrate is almost an afterthought, estimated at 5.5% of dry matter on the Mackerel and Lamb and 3.8% on the Venison. Neither list carries grain, potato or pulse anywhere on it, and that is rare even among meat led foods. The fat comes from the animals themselves, with no separate oil poured in.

The short plant list is entirely functional. Chicory inulin is the prebiotic, and the gut's own bacteria feed on it. Dried apple pomace supplies fibre, kelp brings natural iodine, lecithin helps the fat and water sides hold together, and parsley is there for freshness. New Zealand green mussel at 3% is the entry with a reputation of its own, a shellfish long fed for joint comfort.

The added mineral panel is small and well chosen. Zinc, copper, iron and manganese all arrive as chelates, the form usually picked for absorption, with vitamin D3 at 840 IU per kilo. Tocopherol extracts from vegetable oils keep the food fresh. That is the natural vitamin E route, with no synthetic antioxidant in the bag.

Venison and venison organs make up 93% of this recipe, one land animal from muscle through to bone, which is as close to single protein feeding as a complete food comfortably gets. Only the green mussel comes from elsewhere, so a dog avoiding shellfish is the one exception to make. Venison is a genuinely new meat for most dogs. This recipe is the richer of the pair, at 465 kcal per 100g with protein at 54.4% of dry matter. Its panel also adds selenium at 0.09mg per kilo that the other does not carry.

The Mackerel and Lamb is £36.40 a kilo and the Venison is £50.72 a kilo, both sold in 1kg and 2.5kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 181 to 187 grams a day, based on roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £6.79 a day on the Mackerel and Lamb and £9.16 a day on the Venison, the small daily weights being simply what an air dried food at this density does.