Arden Grange Sensitive Adult Wet: White fish & potato review

This recipe finishes in our Good band, one step under the Excellent the middle of the adult wet shelf occupies. Read it as a well made everyday food, not an outlier in either direction. Nutritional balance and transparency both come out Outstanding, which is the shape you would expect from a label like this one. A single clearly declared animal sits at a high inclusion, the analysis gives up its numbers, and nothing is tucked away behind a category term. Protein and processing reads Average and value Good.

The figure holding it back is carbohydrate, converting to an estimated 22.5% of dry matter where the typical adult wet food runs at 15.8%. On a wet label that number is worked out by difference, so it carries the fibre and any unlisted sugars along with the starch, and here the starch itself is potato rather than cereal.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh White Fish (64%), Potato Powder (8%), Dried Potato (1% equivalent to 4%), Dried Peas, Dried Carrots, Minerals, Dried Seaweed, Fish Oil, Beet Pulp, Glucosamine, Chondroitin, Cranberry Extract, Yucca Extract, Yeast Extract (high nucleotides).

Fresh white fish at 64% is the whole of the animal content, and that is a substantial share for a wet recipe. Protein converts to 55.0% of dry matter, a strongly meat-led analysis. Fish also tends to be an easier protein for dogs the everyday meats have already upset. That is the thinking behind the Sensitive name, and the ingredient list keeps faith with it.

Potato powder at 8% and dried potato at 1%, which the label explains is equivalent to 4% before drying, carry the starch, with dried peas and dried carrots behind them. Whole peas bring fibre and a spread of vitamins and minerals. Carrots add their own antioxidants and are easy on a dog once cooked, and the beet pulp further down is a gentle fermentable fibre that helps stools hold their shape.

The tail of the list is where the sensitive thinking shows. Dried seaweed brings a broad set of minerals including iodine, and yeast extract is described as high in nucleotides. Yucca extract is the ingredient makers reach for when they want to take the edge off what comes out the other end. Cranberry sits alongside them at trace level. None of these are why you would buy the food, but they are sensible company for the fish.

Glucosamine and chondroitin arrive without figures beside them. Both supplements come from animals, and which animal is never said. In a household running a strict single-protein plan that is worth a thought. Keep to whatever joint dose your vet has set for a dog with a diagnosed problem, and let this be the dinner underneath.

The added panel is dosed in full: vitamin A at 4,500 IU, vitamin D3 at 656 IU and vitamin E at 52 mg. Zinc at 48 mg leads the trace elements down through iron, copper, manganese, iodine and selenium. Printed figures like these are more than a good many wet labels bother with, and they are part of why the transparency reading here is a comfortable one.

£6.05 a kilo. It comes in one size, 395 g, with packs of 6, 24 and 48.

As a guide, feeding works out at around £7.14 a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is roughly 1180 grams a day. The label's own guide for a dog of 10 to 25kg runs from 690 to 1360 grams, so the two readings land in much the same place.