Acana Butcher's Favorites Free Run Poultry and Liver: our recipe review

Acana · Butcher's Favorites Free Run Poultry and Liver · Dry food · Adult maintenance

On the facts printed on its own label, Acana Butcher's Favorites Free Run Poultry and Liver scores 97 out of 100 on our rubric: top of the range we have scored. The panel opens with Chicken, and the first ingredient signal earns 20 of its 20 points. At 36% crude protein it ranks 13 of the 68 Acana recipes we scored for protein. Crude fat reads 17%.

At 421 kcal a cup it sits mid range for energy, so standard portion maths applies. Legumes appear on 5 separate lines of the panel (whole chickpeas, whole peas, whole red lentils, whole green lentils and more). Read together they would sit higher in the order than any one of them does alone, and they carry part of the protein figure with them. Its adequacy claim rests on formulation: balanced on paper against the AAFCO nutrient profiles rather than fed to dogs in a trial. Our November 2026 check of FDA records found no posted dog food recall events for Acana.

The panel runs to 42 ingredient lines. 11 of them are animal source lines and 8 are plant lines. The first added fat appears at line 8, so 7 lines sit ahead of it in the recipe by weight. Salt appears at line 18 of 42: ingredients listed after salt are present in small amounts, a standard reading aid for long panels. The vitamin and mineral pack begins around line 19; the 24 lines from there on are mostly supplements, preservatives and functional extras rather than staple foods.

The label facts

How the score breaks down

Ingredient notes: the first ten, one by one

Definitions below are written from AAFCO's ingredient definitions in our own words. They describe what an ingredient is, never what a brand claims about it. Names that appear in our ingredient dictionary link to it; the dictionary counts how many scored recipes carry each ingredient.

• Chicken. Chicken is the named meat in fresh form. Panel order is set by weight before cooking, and fresh meat is mostly water, so its share of the finished food is smaller than its place at the top suggests.
• chicken meal. chicken meal is the named animal rendered and ground, with water and most fat cooked off before it is weighed. Per kilo it carries far more protein than the fresh meat does.
• herring meal. herring meal is the named animal rendered and ground, with water and most fat cooked off before it is weighed. Per kilo it carries far more protein than the fresh meat does.
• whole chickpeas. whole chickpeas is a legume bringing starch, fiber and plant protein together. Legumes help a panel reach its protein figure without meat, which is worth knowing when you read the protein line.
• whole peas. whole peas is a legume bringing starch, fiber and plant protein together. Legumes help a panel reach its protein figure without meat, which is worth knowing when you read the protein line.
• chicken liver. chicken liver is organ tissue from a named animal. Organs are dense in vitamins, minerals and amino acids, and they are a normal part of what a dog is built to eat.
• whole red lentils. whole red lentils is a legume: starch, fiber and roughly a quarter protein by weight. A block of legumes in a panel is doing protein work as well as energy work.
• chicken fat. chicken fat is rendered fat from the named source. Fat is the densest energy in the recipe and carries much of its flavor.
• dried chicken. dried chicken has already had its water taken out before it is weighed in, so a kilo of it stands for several kilos of the fresh meat. It is one of the most protein dense forms an ingredient can take.
• turkey. turkey is the named meat in fresh form. Panel order is set by weight before cooking, and fresh meat is mostly water, so its share of the finished food is smaller than its place at the top suggests.

One pattern to see whole: legumes appear on 5 lines of this panel. Makers split one plant family across several named forms (whole, protein, starch, fiber), and each form is legal on its own line. Read as a family, they would rank higher in the order than any one line does.

The brand's recall record

No FDA posted dog food recall events for this brand were found in our November 2026 check of FDA recall records. That is a statement about what we could verify, not proof of a perfect history.

See the full dog food recall tracker for recent events across all brands.

Other Acana recipes we scored

Those are the twelve highest scoring of the 67 other Acana recipes we scored. The full comparison, flagship review included, is on the Acana brand review.

Feeding it

Switch foods gradually over about a week, mixing more of the new food into the old each day. Portion by calories, not by the look of the bowl: our feeding calculator works out a daily amount from your dog's weight, and this recipe's calorie line above is the number it needs.

What that means at the bowl, for a typical neutered adult (resting energy 70 times body weight to the power 0.75, times 1.6; treats come out of the same budget):

Puppies, pregnant dogs and very active dogs need more; older and weight watching dogs need less. The calculator linked above adjusts for those cases.