The scores
Raised Right Original Chicken: B (86/100) — Chicken Thigh, Chicken Heart, Chicken Liver, Carrots, Cranberries.
The Farmer's Dog Beef Recipe: A (90/100) — Beef, Sweet Potato, Lentils, Carrot, Beef Liver.
How the ingredients compare
Both decks lead with real, named meat. Raised Right opens with chicken thigh, chicken heart, and chicken liver — three muscle-and-organ chicken inclusions before a single plant appears (carrots, then cranberries). It is an ultra-minimal nine-ingredient formula built on one protein, with no legumes, no grains, and no potato anywhere on the panel, which keeps it very low-glycemic and genuinely limited-ingredient. The Farmer’s Dog Beef Recipe opens with beef, sweet potato, lentils, carrot, and beef liver — USDA human-grade beef paired with a whole-food carbohydrate base and an organ inclusion.
The meaningful difference is breadth versus restraint. The Farmer’s Dog carries a slightly broader food base plus a supplement tail (taurine and chelated minerals) that fortifies its completeness margin. Raised Right covers its entire vitamin and mineral profile through whole-food add-ins — egg shell powder for calcium, kelp for iodine, cod liver oil for vitamins A and D — rather than a long synthetic premix. That whole-food approach is a real strength for owners who want minimal supplementation, but it leaves a thinner completeness cushion than a formula with a dedicated fortification tail, which is the core of the four-point gap.
Where The Farmer's Dog pulls ahead
The Farmer’s Dog clears our A line at 90 and Raised Right lands at 86, a four-point spread that comes down to completeness confidence rather than ingredient quality — both are excellent there. The Beef Recipe pairs USDA human-grade beef with a documented, traceable supply chain and rounds out its nutrient profile with a supplement tail (taurine, chelated minerals) layered on top of whole foods. That combination of a slightly broader recipe and explicit fortification gives it a wider margin against the full AAFCO adult vitamin and mineral profile.
It also brings more bowl variety across its lineup, which helps with rotation and with picky dogs, while still holding to fresh, gently cooked, human-grade standards. If your priority is the highest overall grade with a fortified, well-documented completeness story, this is the pick. Shop on Amazon →
Where Raised Right holds its own
Raised Right is a true limited-ingredient diet, and that is exactly why some dogs should choose it over the higher-scoring option. Nine whole foods, a single chicken protein, and a panel co-formulated with Dr. Karen Becker make it one of the cleanest, most transparent fresh recipes we have scored. For a dog that needs a simple, short, single-protein deck — sensitive stomachs, suspected food sensitivities, or an elimination-style approach — fewer moving parts is a feature, not a deficit.
It is also completely legume-free, grain-free, and potato-free. The Farmer’s Dog Beef Recipe includes lentils at position three; that is a single legume, and our rubric does not flag it as a pulse stack or penalize it. But owners of breeds predisposed to diet-associated DCM who prefer to keep the bowl legume-free entirely will find Raised Right’s deck a cleaner fit on that one axis. Shop on Amazon →
The bottom line
This is a narrow, premium decision, and both foods are priced like it — roughly $10 to $15 a day depending on your dog’s weight. Choose The Farmer’s Dog Beef Recipe for the higher overall grade, more variety, and a fortified completeness margin backed by a documented supply chain. Choose Raised Right Original Chicken when you need a true limited-ingredient, single-protein, legume-free diet for a sensitive or LID-requiring dog. Read the full breakdowns in our Raised Right review and our The Farmer’s Dog review, then run either one through the analyzer to see the ingredient-by-ingredient grades for yourself.