How it’s made:
All of our freeze-dried, cold-pressed and Kibble + Raw recipes use high quality, human-grade ingredients. The only difference is in the way they are made.
Cold-pressing uses low temperatures (42-47 °C) to gently press the food. Whereas freeze-drying removes 98% of the water using no heat, leaving a microbiologically raw nugget. Our high quality Kibble + Raw contains a carefully extruded, high-protein kibble, mixed with our renowned freeze-dried single-protein nuggets.
All of our processes retain the natural nutrients, oils and flavours for your dog’s benefit.
Compare this to commercial dog food, exposed to high temperatures exceeding 130 °C destroying the natural nutrients and proteins. This requires the essential vitamins and minerals to be artificially sprayed back onto the food at the end.
Price:
Freeze-drying is a more complex process than cold-pressing and requires more complex equipment. As a result, the end-product is priced differently.
However, it’s important to remember that our freeze-dried food has had all of its moisture removed, making it much lighter than our cold-pressed products. This means your dog will require smaller portions, allowing your bag of freeze-dried dog food to last longer.
Storage:
All of our foods are room temperature stable and can be stored in the cupboard! No freezing, no thawing, no special storage required.
Puppies:
Our cold-pressed food and Kibble + Raw Puppy recipes are suitable for puppies from 4 weeks of age. For young puppies, we recommend soaking the food in warm water for 10 minutes before serving to soften the food.
We would recommend our complete freeze-dried food for dogs that are fully grown. For smaller breeds, this is around 10 months, whilst for larger breeds, this is 15 months. The reason for this is because it is so nutritionally dense, it can be quite easy to accidentally over-feed.
If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our friendly team at james@ella.co