Brit Premium Sausage Chicken review

The route into our Outstanding band is a direct one here. The recipe is meat first by a very wide margin, the animal is named right down to the individual organs, and estimated carbohydrate lands below where the wet category normally sits. Nutritional balance and transparency read Outstanding on the back of that, with protein and processing Excellent. An everyday adult wet food reaches our Excellent band, and this roll finishes a clear band ahead of that mark.

Ingredients, as declared: 95% chicken (chicken meat, liver, hearts, necks, stomachs), rice 3.6%, 0.9% broth, collagen 0.5%

Chicken at 95% is about as close to a single ingredient recipe as wet dog food gets, and the label goes further by naming the parts: meat, liver, hearts, necks and stomachs. Liver carries more nutrition per mouthful than almost anything else a dog eats, and it is heavy in vitamin B12, vitamin A and copper. Hearts and stomachs bring useful minerals of their own. This is nose to tail feeding written out on a label.

Protein converts to 37.5% of dry matter and fat to 28.1%, a rich reading. At 144 kcal per 100g there is more in every gram than most wet food gives you. Moisture is declared at 68%, low for the category, so more of every slice is food and less of it is water than usual.

Rice at 3.6% is the only cereal and the only real starch, which leaves estimated carbohydrate at 13.4% of dry matter, below the 15.8% typical of adult wet food. Broth at 0.9% and collagen at 0.5% close the list, the collagen being connective tissue that helps the roll hold its shape on the board.

Crude ash is the figure that needs saying plainly. It converts to 19.4% of dry matter, which is high, and the necks in the recipe are the likely explanation, since bone brings its minerals along with it. The label prints no calcium figure of its own, so the exact mineral balance is not something you can read off the pack. For a healthy adult dog that is unlikely to matter at all. For a growing dog or one on a mineral restricted plan it is worth a quick word with your vet first. Every added vitamin and trace element shows its own dose.

Sold as a single 0.8 kg roll.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat around 585 grams a day, working from a maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). Because this is a dense wet food, that daily weight sits well below what a lighter wet recipe would need.