Butchers Simply Gentle Can: Chicken & Rice review

The chicken and turkey tins both settle in our Excellent band, with the salmon recipe finishing a step above them in Outstanding. That gap is narrower than it sounds. The analysis panel is identical across all three, and the difference comes down to how the animal content is divided, not to anything you would notice in the bowl.

The middle ground of a strong wet field falls in our Excellent band. That puts the two poultry tins level with it and the salmon a step above. The numbers doing the work are a protein figure of 44.4% of dry matter and an estimated carbohydrate of 12.8%, comfortably below the 15.8% a typical adult wet food carries.

Ingredients, as declared: British and Irish Farmed Meat (Chicken 38.5%, Beef 13.5%), Broth 39.5% (Including Water and Dried Seaweed), Cooked Wholegrain Rice 6%, Salmon Oil 0.3%, Minerals, Chicory Root (Prebiotic FOS 0.06%), Yeast (Prebiotic MOS 0.05%), Parsley, Rosehip, Mint.

Every tin opens with British and Irish farmed meat, named and given percentages. Chicken leads at 38.5% in the chicken recipe, and beef is a constant at 13.5% across all three. That matters for a dog steered away from red meat, because there is no getting away from it here. Listed under their plain names, both read as fresh meats rather than dried meals.

Broth at 39.5% is water with dried seaweed in it, declared with a percentage rather than left as an unlisted liquid. Seaweed carries a wide spread of minerals and is a natural source of iodine, and iodine is topped up again in the added panel at 0.5 mg.

Just one cereal appears, cooked wholegrain rice at 6%, and wholegrain is the fuller version of it, carrying more fibre than white rice does. It is the sort of steady, familiar starch a gentle recipe reaches for. With so little else in the tin, the estimated carbohydrate stays low at 12.8% of dry matter, a by-difference figure taken from the declared analysis.

The prebiotics are small and printed: FOS at 0.06% inside the chicory root and MOS at 0.05% inside the yeast. Both feed the bacteria already living in the large intestine, and both are the kind of quiet inclusion that fits a recipe built around a delicate gut. Salmon oil at 0.3% is a smaller entry again, enough to bring a little of the marine omega oils and enough to matter to a fish-avoiding household, but not a working dose of anything.

Parsley, rosehip and mint close each list at trace level. The added panel is dosed throughout, with vitamin A at 1,250 I.U. and vitamin E at 13 mg alongside zinc at 20 mg and manganese at 2.5 mg. The salmon tin's panel differs slightly from the other two, listing vitamin D3 at 125 I.U. and adding copper at 0.5 mg.

Chicken at 38.5% with beef at 13.5%, the poultry-led version of the recipe and one of the two tins in our Excellent band.

Sold in 390g tins, in packs of 6 and 18.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, the energy estimate is 840 kcal a day, from 110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance calculation. That works out at roughly 1028 grams, near enough two and a half tins. The label is more generous, starting a dog of 10 to 25kg at 780 grams a day.