Complete vs Complementary Raw Dog Food: What’s the Difference?

Sometimes the terminology associated with the different types of raw feeding can be overwhelming. Complete. Complementary. 80:10:10. Single protein. What does it all mean, what’s the difference, and what should I be feeding my dog?

A complete raw dog food is formulated to provide all the essential nutrients your dog needs to thrive. A complete raw recipe will typically contain carefully selected ingredients in specific proportions to provide the right balance of protein, fat, vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients.

For most owners, this is the simplest way to feed raw. You don’t need to work out whether your dog is getting enough of a particular vitamin or mineral or try to balance different ingredients yourself. That work has already been done in the formulation of the food.

Most of Wolf Tucker’s recipes are complete.

A complementary food is different. It isn't designed to provide every nutrient your dog needs when fed on its own over the long term. Instead, it is intended to be fed alongside other foods as part of the overall diet. Feeding a diet consisting of complementary meals can be a great choice if your dog need an exclusionary diet due to allergies, or if you want more ownership and flexibility over what goes into your dog’s bowl.

Wolf Tucker has three complementary meals – Chicken, Green Tripe, and White Fish. These are all single ingredient meals meaning they can be a great choice for dogs with allergies or on an exclusionary diet.

Another common type of complementary raw food is known as 80:10:10. These recipes comprise of 80% meat, 10% bone and 10% offal. Wolf Tucker complementary meals are not 80:10:10 recipes as they do not contain offal.

So which type of diet should you feed? Neither is automatically "better". They're made for different jobs. If you want straightforward raw feeding with the nutritional balancing already done for you, choose a complete diet. If you want more control over individual ingredients and how your dog's overall diet is put together, complementary foods can give you that flexibility. There's also no reason the two worlds can't overlap. Depending on how you feed, complementary products can form part of a wider feeding plan alongside complete foods.