Barking Heads Golden Years Wet: Chicken & Salmon review

Excellent is where this one lands, and comfortably so, with nutritional balance and transparency reading Outstanding and protein and processing and value alike in Excellent. Adult wet food typically occupies this same band, and it is one of the stronger categories we score, so what counts here is doing the fundamentals properly. Name the animals, count them, keep the starch modest and write the rest of the list in words a shopper can understand.

The detail that lifts it is the carbohydrate reading. It converts to an estimated 14.5% of dry matter, a shade under the 15.8% typical for adult wet food, which is not what you would expect from a recipe carrying this many vegetables. Senior foods often lean harder on starch than their adult stablemates, and this one does not.

Ingredients, as declared: 85% Chicken & Salmon includes - Fresh Deboned Chicken (40%), Chicken Broth (25%), Fresh Salmon (20%), Sweet Potato, Carrots, Courgette, Spinach, Tomato, Salmon Oil, Sunflower Oil, Green Lipped Mussel Extract, Seaweed, Lucerne, Parsley, Celery, Chicory Root, Nettle, Turmeric, Aniseed, Green Tea, Minerals

The animal content is set out in three parts rather than left as a single claim. Fresh deboned chicken is 40%, chicken broth 25% and fresh salmon 20%, so the 85% on the front is checkable line by line. Protein converts to 40.9% of dry matter and fat to 27.3%, a rich reading for a wet food and a helpful one for an older dog that has started to lose condition.

The plant side is sweet potato, carrots, courgette, spinach and tomato. Carrots bring vitamin A and soluble fibre, and once cooked they are easy on a dog's digestion, which matters more with age. Crude fibre converts to 6.8% of dry matter and the carbohydrate estimate stays low, so the vegetables are seasoning the recipe rather than bulking it out.

Both oils are named on the label. Salmon oil brings the omega-3 fats that sit behind most of the joint, skin and coat advice an older dog attracts. Sunflower oil sits beside it, high in vitamin E and light on saturated fat. Green lipped mussel extract follows, a shellfish with a long history in joint supplements and the third animal ingredient in the pack.

After that comes the botanical tail: seaweed for minerals and iodine, lucerne, parsley, celery, chicory root for its prebiotic inulin, nettle, turmeric, aniseed and green tea. The label puts no figure on any of it, and all of it sits at the small end of the list. Treat the herb garden as a pleasant extra and buy the food for the chicken and salmon.

The added panel is short and every entry is dosed: vitamin D3 at 450 IU, vitamin E at 40 mg, zinc at 30mg, manganese at 2mg, copper at 0.4mg and iodine at 0.3mg. Crude ash converts to 10.5% of dry matter, though no calcium figure is published, so the mineral picture is only as detailed as the panel allows. With this much meat in the pack, a good deal of the micronutrition comes from the ingredients.

£6.67 a kilo, in 300g packs, with cases of 10, 20, 30 and 40 available.

On a maintenance basis of 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog (110 × bodyweight^0.75), a day's feeding is roughly 896 grams and about £5.98. For comparison, the label's own guide gives 450 to 600 grams a day at 10kg and 750 to 1050 grams at 20kg on wet food alone.