Home / Dog food / Blue Buffalo / BLUE Wilderness Adult Dog Chicken-Free Lamb Recipe

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BLUE Wilderness Adult Dog Chicken-Free Lamb Recipe

Dry food · adult dogs

A formulated-to-meet, deboned-first dry food that's denser than 79% (you feed fewer cups). Cost-per-day isn't available yet — this SKU isn't price-matched.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-07-11

Tell us about your dogevery number on this page updates live ↓
40 lb
For a 40-lb adult: 2¼ cupsper day not pricedper day —bag lasts passes 2 fit checks ↓

Joint, kidney, dental or heart concerns? Labels can't honestly answer those — that's vet territory. Why we don't checkmark them →

The evidence

The Verified Label

Every food on this site gets this exact panel — same fields, same order, sourced from the official label — so brands finally become comparable. Dots show where this food sits among all 494 dry foods we've verified.

Verified LabelThe standardized pet-food panel
VPFD № BLUE-B
verified 2026-07-11

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Moisture hides the real recipe: kibble is ~10% water, canned food ~78%. Removing water puts every food on one scale, so these are the only nutrition numbers that can be compared across foods. As-fed label values shown small.

We only publish numbers verified from official label sources; we haven't verified this label yet. The guaranteed analysis exists on the bag — it just isn't in our verified record so far.

Protein Not yet verifiedlabel min: —% no corpus anchor — value not yet verified
Fat Not yet verifiedlabel min: —% no corpus anchor — value not yet verified
Fiber Not yet verifiedlabel max: —% no corpus anchor — value not yet verified
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate Not yet verifiedneeds protein/fat/fiber anchor available once more brands disclose ash
Calcium / Phosphorus extended guarantees: none verified yet Not yet verifiedcalcium/phosphorus no ratio to anchor

Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog

Calorie density 422 kcal/cup— kcal/kg denser than 79% of dry foods (median 388) — you feed fewer cups
Daily serving2¼ cups
Cost per day—
4.5-lb bag lasts—

Cost per 1,000 kcal not available yet — this SKU isn't price-matched to a current retail listing. Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.

Standards & ingredients

AAFCO statement
what this means
Two kinds of AAFCO claims exist. Most foods are only "formulated to meet" nutrient profiles — a paper calculation. A smaller set carry the stronger claim: fed to real dogs in AAFCO-procedure trials ("Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate…").
 Formulated to meet · maintenance
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Deboned Lamb · Beef Meal · Salmon Meal (source of Omega 3 Fatty Acids) · Barley · Oatmeal
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyYes
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)2 (peas, pea protein)
BHA / BHT preservativesNone on label
Carrageenan (thickener)None
Ethoxyquin
why unknown
When a fish-meal supplier adds ethoxyquin, U.S. rules don't require it on the finished label — so no label can prove its absence for recipes containing fish meal. We report this as a gap rather than guessing.
 Can't be determined from label

Safety

FDA recalls — Blue Buffalo, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 2 of 15 standard fields
Green = verified favorable · amber = gap in the record · red = verified unfavorable · gray = not disclosed / neutral fact.
Source: official label source (official) · anchors: 494 verified dry dog foods (360 priced) · how to read this label

The fit

For your dog, specifically

Checked for a 40-lb adult with a sensitive stomach — the same published criteria our finder uses. Change your dog above and these update.

✓
Validated for adult dogsAAFCO statement covers adult maintenance.
✓
Passes our sensitive-stomach checksNamed animal protein first, and no unnamed by-products in the ingredient list.
·
Chicken-free recipeNot selected for your dog — but relevant if chicken sensitivity ever comes up.

The source material

The full ingredient list

Every flag on the Verified Label is computed from this list. Ingredients are ordered by pre-cooking weight — the first five carry the most information.

Deboned Lamb, Beef Meal, Salmon Meal (source of Omega 3 Fatty Acids), Barley, Oatmeal, Peas, Pea Protein, Canola Oil (source of Omega 6 Fatty Acids), Flaxseed, Natural Flavor, Dried Yeast, Dried Tomato Pomace, Direct Dehydrated Alfalfa Pellets, DL-Methionine, Potatoes, Dried Chicory Root, Potassium Chloride, Pea Fiber, Alfalfa Nutrient Concentrate, Calcium Carbonate, L-Threonine, Salt, Choline Chloride, preserved with Mixed Tocopherols, Dried Sweet Potatoes, Carrots, Zinc Amino Acid Chelate, Zinc Sulfate, Vegetable Juice for color, Taurine, Ferrous Sulfate, Vitamin E Supplement, Iron Amino Acid Chelate, Blueberries, Cranberries, Barley Grass, Parsley, Turmeric, Dried Kelp, Yucca Schidigera Extract, Niacin (Vitamin B3), Calcium Pantothenate (Vitamin B5), Copper Sulfate, Biotin (Vitamin B7), L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (Vitamin C), L-Lysine, L-Carnitine, Vitamin A Supplement, Copper Amino Acid Chelate, Manganese Sulfate, Manganese Amino Acid Chelate, Glucosamine Hydrochloride, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin D3 Supplement, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Calcium Iodate, Folic Acid (Vitamin B9), Sodium Selenite, Oil of Rosemary

Wet ingredients like fresh deboned lamb shrink once cooked — which is why named meals appearing high on the list matter: they keep meaningful animal protein after moisture is removed.

The maker

Who makes this — and how they back it up

The four questions the WSAVA nutrition guidelines tell you to ask a pet-food company. Every answer is sourced or marked as an undisclosed gap — never guessed. This is the "is it made competently?" axis that star-rating sites skip.

Owns its manufacturing Mixed

Same source also states: 'Blue Buffalo sources and produces everything from its own facilities or from partners across the United States.' Indicates a mix of own facilities plus third-party co-manufacturers.

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Yes — sourced

Blue Buffalo's professional site states doctorate-level animal nutritionists on staff. dvm360 (via search, not fetched) reports Laura B. Gaylord, DVM, DACVIM (Nutrition) — a board-certified veterinary nutritionist — and Matt Panasevich, PhD, work at Blue Buffalo; the true value rests on the fetched bluevetconnect quote.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Yes — sourced

15 of 443 verified labels in our corpus carry an AAFCO feeding-trial substantiation statement.

source →
Peer-reviewed research Unconfirmed

14 PubMed-indexed papers carry this brand's name in an author affiliation — but without a recognized pet-nutrition research arm we can't confirm these are the company's own studies rather than unrelated name matches (surnames, the taxonomic family "Canidae", institutions). We don't count it as confirmed research.

source →
Parent company General Mills, Inc. ↗ Founded 2002 ↗ Headquarters / plant Wilton, CT ↗ FDA recalls on record None on record

Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Blue Buffalo brand page →