Almo Nature HFC Complete: Veal with Ham review

Icelandic lamb, Irish Angus beef and North Atlantic pollock all reach our Excellent band, while Ham with peas and Veal with Ham finish in our Good band. The five sit close together, with only a small step from top to bottom. Wet food scores strongly for us and the typical adult wet food is an Excellent-band food in its own right. That puts the leading three at about the level of the shelf around them, with the other two a shade under it.

Ham with peas is the interesting case. Its headline ingredient is another cut of the pork already in the tin. The recipe reads as pork and chicken from top to bottom, and it shares the back of the range with the veal. Protein and processing reads Good on the ham and the veal and Excellent on the other three. Four of the recipes share an analysis, which is why the spread stays as narrow as it does.

Ingredients, as declared: 26% veal, 23% chicken, 9% pork, 4% ham, minerals, 0.2% fish oil, 0.1% chicory.

The construction repeats every time: the headline animal at 26%, pork and chicken behind it, a named vegetable at 4%, then minerals, fish oil and chicory. Seven or eight entries in total, all of them named, which is a great deal more than the average wet label offers.

Protein converts to 52.8% of dry matter on four of the recipes and 50.0% on the veal, with fat at 27.8% and 25.0% respectively. Those are meat-shaped numbers, and an estimated carbohydrate of 6.1% of dry matter against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food says there is very little in these tins besides animal.

The provenance names are doing real work here. Icelandic lamb, Irish Angus beef and North Atlantic pollock each give you an origin as well as a species. The veal recipe goes one better still, putting a percentage on all four of its animals.

Fish oil appears on every label and it is there for the omega-3 fats rather than for the energy. Chicory closes each list, bringing inulin, the soluble fibre that feeds the good bacteria further down a dog's gut. The veal tin puts figures on both, at 0.2% and 0.1%, which confirms they are working at token level throughout.

The added panel is short and dosed on every recipe: vitamin D3 at 140 IU/kg with zinc, copper, manganese and iodine each carrying a printed figure. Vitamin E at 30 mg/kg joins the panel on four of the five, and the Veal with Ham label is the one that leaves it out.

The odd one out in every respect. Veal at 26%, chicken at 23%, pork at 9% and ham at 4%, so every animal in the tin carries a percentage. It comes in a larger 150 g tin, holding slightly less water at 80.0% moisture. Estimated carbohydrate runs higher here at 12.5% of dry matter.

The 85 g tins are £14.01 a kilo for the ham, lamb and pollock recipes and £12.04 for the Irish Angus beef. Veal with Ham arrives in a 150 g tin at £11.00 a kilo.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out between £10.72 and £14.78 a day depending on the recipe. That is roughly 1055 grams of the small tins or 974 grams of the veal, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). At around 80 kcal per 100g these are light tins, so the daily weight is high and many owners pair them with another food.