Caboodle Gastro Digestive Care Dry Food review

A Good band finish puts this recipe level with the typical adult dry food, which lands there as well. Transparency does much of the lifting: that pillar reads Outstanding, value reads Good and the other two read Average. You can see why on a label that prints its hydrolysed shares, its fibre source and its prebiotic doses down to the milligram. The nutrition helps too, with carbohydrate finishing under the category norm and a named animal carrying a solid share of the recipe.

Ingredients, as declared: Freshly Prepared Hydrolysed Turkey (26%), Sweet Potato, Potato, Hydrolysed Dried Turkey (11.5%), Turkey Fat (9%), Pea Protein, Lignocellulose (2.5%), Hydrolysed Turkey Gravy (2.5%), Minerals, Fructooligosaccharides (FOS) 1,350mg/kg, Mannanoligosaccharides (MOS) 565mg/kg, Dried Marigold (Source of Lutein).

Hydrolysis is the headline idea. The turkey here, 26% freshly prepared, 11.5% dried and a 2.5% gravy, has had its proteins cut into smaller fragments. That processing step is normally seen in diets built for sensitive systems, on the logic that smaller fragments are less likely to be recognised and objected to. It also makes the protein easy to digest, and turkey fat at 9% keeps even the oil on the same bird.

Between them, sweet potato and potato do all the starch work, and no cereal appears anywhere. Carbohydrate converts to 44.1% of dry matter, usefully under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food, while protein reaches 27.2% and fat 16.8% on the same basis.

Pea protein deserves an honest word: it is a refined plant protein helping the total along, and plant protein is not the equal of meat protein in a dog's bowl. It is a supporting act here, with the hydrolysed turkey doing the real work.

Lignocellulose at 2.5% is a concentrated, purified plant fibre, there to firm and regulate stools, and fibre converts to 4.3% of dry matter overall. It is a processed fibre and not fibre from whole vegetables, which some owners prefer to see, but it is a legitimate tool in a digestive recipe and it is declared with its percentage.

Two prebiotics are dosed rather than implied, fructooligosaccharides at 1,350mg per kilo and mannanoligosaccharides at 565mg per kilo. Both feed the bacteria that do good work in the large intestine, and dried marigold supplies lutein. The trace minerals come as standard sulphates with selenium as sodium selenite at 0.29mg, every one itemised on the label.

£8.00 a kilo, in 1.5kg and 10kg bags.

With energy declared at 374 kcal per 100g, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 225 grams a day, around £1.80. That works from the standard maintenance estimate of roughly 840 kcal daily (110 × bodyweight^0.75).