Ava Health & Vitality Cockapoo Wet: Puppy Chicken Pâté review

Both recipes come out in Good. The typical adult wet food sits one band higher, in Excellent. The difference is about how much of each pouch is meat, with nothing about safety in it. Chicken at 35% is respectable without being generous, and starch, water and refined fibre account for a good deal of what comes after it.

The declaration, on the other hand, is thorough. Percentages run down to 0.001%, both labels print their own energy figures rather than leaving us to estimate, and the additive panel is dosed throughout. On a dry matter basis the adult pâté reads 36.4% protein and 35.0% fat, and the puppy 34.8% and 36.5%. Both are rich in fat for a wet food, and a good part of the energy comes from it.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (35%), Sweet Potato (8%), Sunflower Oil (3.2%), Cellulose Fibre (0.9%), Fish Oil (0.7%) Tapioca Starch, Yeast Extract, Minerals, Yeast (as a source of Prebiotic Mannan-oligosaccharides and Beta-glucans)(0.055%), Chicory Root Extract (as a source of Prebiotic Fructo-oligosaccharides)(0.02%), Yucca Extract (0.005%), Cranberry Extract (0.002%), Green Tea Extract (0.001%), Pomegranate Extract (0.001%)

Chicken at 35% leads both recipes, in its fresh form and with a printed percentage. It is a good choice for a breed like this: palatable, easy to digest and a proper source of protein. The only asterisk is popularity. Chicken reaches more bowls than any other meat. That makes intolerance to it more commonly reported than to anything else. A cockapoo that itches on chicken elsewhere will itch on it here.

The carbohydrate on both labels comes from sweet potato at 8% and tapioca starch. Tapioca is starch from the cassava root and contributes little else, while sweet potato brings fibre and vitamins along with its starch. Cellulose fibre at 0.9% is worth naming plainly: a refined plant fibre there for bulk and stool structure, with no nutrition to speak of.

The oils separate the two recipes. The adult pâté carries sunflower oil at 2.6% and olive oil at 0.3%. Olive oil is a genuinely good addition for coat condition and a source of vitamin E, and the adult recipe uses no fish at all. The puppy pâté drops the olive oil, lifts sunflower oil to 3.2% and brings in fish oil at 0.7% for the omega-3 a growing dog benefits from.

Both labels then run the same tail. Mannan-oligosaccharides and beta-glucans arrive with the yeast at 0.055%, and fructo-oligosaccharides with the chicory root extract at 0.02%. The gut flora lower down is what they feed. Yucca extract, cranberry, green tea and pomegranate follow at trace level, along for the ride.

The added panel is dosed on both, with vitamin E at 95 mg and taurine printed alongside it, and the adult recipe adding L-carnitine at 320 mg. The trace elements are chelated, and the carrier is a protein hydrolysate. The gut takes that form up better than a plain mineral salt, and zinc at 37.6 mg heads the list.

The puppy pâté swaps the olive oil for fish oil at 0.7% and pushes sunflower oil to 3.2%. That lifts energy to a declared 115 kcal per 100g and fat to 36.5% of dry matter, both sensible for a dog still growing. Calcium converts to 1.74% of dry matter, a level pitched at a small to medium puppy rather than at a large-breed one, and it is served from the smaller 85 g pouch.

The adult pâté is £9.28 a kilo in a 140 g size sold by the 10, and the puppy pâté is £12.74 a kilo in 85 g pouches sold by the 12.

Fed to a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, the adult pâté comes to about £7.15 a day, or roughly 771 grams. That assumes 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Most cockapoos weigh a fair bit less than that. For a dog of 8 to 11 kg the label's own guide asks 420 to 560 grams a day.