Calibra Dog Life Pouch Adult Chicken 10x150g review

This pouch reaches our Excellent band on the strength of a very clean list: chicken at 65%, brown rice at 4%, and four supporting entries, none of them doing anything mysterious. Protein converts to 47.4% of dry matter and fat to 31.6%, a rich, meat led analysis for a wet food. Estimated carbohydrate is remarkably low at 6.3% of dry matter where the category typically runs 15.8%.

Nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding, with protein and processing Good, and the typical adult wet food shares this band. Wet food scores well as a class, so matching that mark takes a real recipe rather than a clever front of pack. What this pouch does not do is show off. There are no botanicals, no joint supplements and no lengthy list of extras, just one meat and a small amount of support around it.

Ingredients, as declared: chicken 65 %, brown rice 4 %, minerals, linseed oil 0.2 %, Plantago seed, powdered beetroot juice.

Chicken at 65% opens the list and no other animal follows it, which is the whole appeal here. Chicken is easy to digest and highly palatable. It is also the meat dogs are most commonly intolerant of, simply because they meet it so often. That makes the same recipe either an obvious choice or an obvious one to skip, depending on your dog's history.

The only cereal here is brown rice at 4%. Being a whole grain, it brings a little fibre along with the starch. The amount is small enough that the estimated carbohydrate finishes at 6.3% of dry matter, low even by wet food standards.

The rest of the list is short and purposeful. Linseed oil at 0.2% supplies plant form omega 3, useful though not the same as the long chain fats a fish oil brings. Plantago seed is a soluble fibre of the psyllium family, the sort of ingredient that steadies a digestion that runs loose. Powdered beetroot juice is there for colour and a little sweetness rather than nutrition.

Minerals appear both in the ingredient list and as a dosed panel. Vitamin D3 comes at 225 IU per kilo and vitamin E at 40 mg, with zinc at 30 mg, manganese at 2 mg, iodine at 0.3 mg and copper at 0.4 mg. No vitamin A figure is printed, so the label leaves that to the chicken itself. Calcium converts to 1.58% of dry matter, ample for adult maintenance, and energy sits at 89 kcal per 100g, a touch under the 97 kcal typical of adult wet food.

Sold in packs of 10 pouches, each 150g.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition the guide is about 940 grams a day, a little over six pouches, working from maintenance energy of roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). Smaller dogs will find the pouch size lands much closer to a single meal.