Calibra Premium Line Adult Cans: Chicken & Beef review

Our Average placing across all four cans comes down to the meat. Protein and processing reads Poor on every can, and the reason repeats itself: the two named animals are a thin slice of a chunk mix whose remainder is left as a category. Nutritional balance is the counterweight and reads Outstanding, while transparency lands in Good on three of the cans and Excellent on the liver and carrot.

The typical adult wet food reaches our Excellent band, which makes the distance look dramatic, though the analysis itself is not. Protein converts to 43.2% of dry matter and fat to 21.6%. Estimated carbohydrate lands at 19.0%, a shade over the 15.8% an adult wet food normally runs. This is not a warning about what is in the can. It is a measure of how much you are being asked to take on trust.

Ingredients, as declared: meat and animal derivatives (62 % in chunks*, of which 8 % beef, 8 % chicken), cereals, minerals, various sugars. *Chunks typically ± 50 % in finished product.

Meat and animal derivatives is a legal category term, and it is the largest thing in these cans. It can mean any part of any warm blooded land animal in any proportion, which means it can describe excellent material and ordinary material with the same four words. The named pair at 8% each is the part of the recipe you can actually hold the maker to.

Cereals is the same idea applied to the grain. No type is given. The wording stays put while the grain behind it changes from batch to batch, so there is no way to steer around one your dog needs avoiding. The analysis, for what it can tell you, is not weak. Protein at 8.0% as fed converts to 43.2% of dry matter, a respectable figure for a wet food. Fat at 4.0% converts to 21.6%, moderate enough to suit a dog that finds richer food heavy going.

Various sugars appear on every one of the four labels. Sugar goes into pet food because dogs like the taste of it, and it does nothing for the nutrition of the can. Its presence here is declared honestly, not hidden behind another category term.

The added panel is short and dosed: vitamin A, vitamin D3 and vitamin E, with copper, zinc, manganese and iodine beneath them, identical on all four cans. No calcium figure is printed anywhere, and the four cans share one analysis panel exactly, which tells you the pairings are flavour changes on a single base rather than four separate recipes.

Chicken at 8% and beef at 8% are the named animals in this can, the most familiar pairing of the four and the easiest sell to a dog with settled tastes. Nothing else on the list separates it from its siblings.

£1.95 a kilo across all four, in 1240g cans sold by the case of 12.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 1132 grams a day, roughly £2.21, taking around 840 kcal a day as the maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75). The energy behind that working is our own estimate of 74 kcal per 100g, as the label declares none, and light energy density is why the daily amount is so high.