Flip over any tub, bag, or box of dog food and you’ll find a little panel most people skip: the Guaranteed Analysis. (On our tubs there’s no hunting for it — ours is displayed proudly on the side, big and visible to anyone picking one up.) It’s the most honest part of the package — and once you know how to read it, you can compare any two foods in about thirty seconds. Here’s how, using our own lab report as the example. We sent our Raw Beaver Grind 80/10/10 to Actlabs, an independent lab in Ancaster, Ontario, and this is exactly what came back.
The five numbers that matter
Crude Protein — ours: 21.2%. Protein builds muscle, skin, coat, and the immune system. For a raw food, anything in the high teens or better is solid. For comparison, the leading national raw brands’ beef dinner comes in at 17% and their turkey dinner at 18%. Our beaver is 21.2% — wild red meat does that.
One honesty note: “crude” protein measures nitrogen, not protein quality. It can’t tell you whether the protein came from meat or from something cheaper. That’s why the ingredient list still matters — ours reads the way it should: whole beaver, ground with bone and organ. Nothing else.
Crude Fat — ours: 5.8%. Fat isn’t the enemy; it’s energy and the carrier for fat-soluble vitamins. But it adds up fast. A whole chicken grind runs about 12% fat, and the big brands’ beef dinner about 9%. Beaver is a genuinely lean wild meat at 5.8% — roughly half the fat — which is why portions of our grind run a touch more generous than with fatty grinds. The lab puts it at about 535 calories per 1-lb tub.
Moisture — ours: 64.4%. This is the number people misread most. Moisture isn’t filler — real, fresh food is wet food. Dogs are built to get much of their water from their meals, and a food that’s two-thirds water is feeding the way nature packaged it. Kibble, by contrast, is usually around 10% moisture. Neither number is “better” on its own — but you have to account for it when you compare labels, which brings us to the trick below.
Ash — ours: 8.86%. “Ash” sounds alarming and isn’t. It’s simply what’s left when a sample is burned away in the lab — the minerals. In a grind with ground bone in it, like ours, ash runs higher, and that’s expected: bone is where the calcium and phosphorus live. High ash in a boneless food would be a question; in an 80/10/10 grind with real bone, it’s the mineral content showing up to be counted.
Fibre and carbohydrates — ours: 1.3% fibre, under 1% carbs. Dogs have no nutritional requirement for carbohydrates. Our grind has no starches, no fillers, no sugar — the carb line reads under 1%, and what’s there is just the trace that comes with the meat itself.
The comparison trick: dry matter
Here’s where labels get sneaky — and where kibble fools almost everyone. A kibble bag can boast 26% protein, and the premium ones boast 32% or even 38%, which looks like it beats a raw food’s 21.2% handily. It doesn’t. Kibble’s number only looks bigger because there’s almost no water in the bag to count.
Do the fair math. Kibble is about 90% dry matter, so its 26% protein is about 29% of the actual food — and even a 38% “high-protein” kibble is only about 42% once you put it on the same footing. Our grind is 35.6% dry matter, so our 21.2% protein is 59.6% of the actual food. On a dry-matter basis — the only honest comparison between wet and dry foods — the kibble that looked higher in protein really isn’t. It’s not even close.
The math is simple: take the number on the label, divide by (100 minus the moisture percentage). Try it on whatever you’re feeding now. Every honest label gives you the moisture number to do it.
Where the rare proteins land
Beef and turkey aren’t the whole raw world. If your dog reacts to the common proteins, the rare ones are where you end up — so here’s how they read on the label, from the makers’ own published analyses:
- Kangaroo is the lean champion: about 20.8% protein and just 2% fat (K9 Choice). Nothing else comes close on fat.
- Bison reads like the lean red meat it is: 18% protein, 9% fat (Big Country Raw’s bison dinner).
- Rabbit is the gentle one: 17% protein, 8% fat in Big Country Raw’s pure rabbit — mild, lean, and a favourite for elimination diets.
- Salmon is the exception that proves the rule: only about 13% protein and a full 12% fat (Iron Will Raw’s ground salmon). It’s an oily fish — the fat is where the omega-3s live, but it is not a lean food.
And beaver? At 21.2% protein it tops this whole list, and at 5.8% fat only kangaroo runs leaner. One fair-play note: the other makers’ numbers above are the minimums their labels guarantee, while ours is a measured lab result — but even giving every one of them the benefit of the doubt, a wild protein that out-proteins bison and rabbit while staying leaner than both is exactly why we built a business on it.
What a label can’t tell you
We’re proud enough of our Guaranteed Analysis — independently tested — that it’s printed right on our tubs. But no panel tells you where the meat came from, how it was handled, or whether the company will show you the actual lab report. Ask. Any raw food maker should be able to tell you their numbers and show you where they came from. Ours just did.
Raw Beaver Grind 80/10/10 — $6 per 1-lb tub, for a limited time. Pickup in Wainfleet, delivery across Ontario, and now in stock in London at Raw Pet Food Ontario, 731 Chester Street. Order at beavertailraw.com or beavertailraw@gmail.com.
— Annette & the Beaver Tail Raw family
📍 Wainfleet, Ontario
Leave a Reply