Canagan Petite: Chicken with Wild Boar Paté review

All seven finish in our Outstanding band and, while they do not finish quite level, the spread is narrow enough that little is gained or lost by picking one over another on quality grounds. The wet shelf scores well as a whole, and the typical adult wet food sits in our Excellent band already, which Petite clears by a step.

Protein and processing reads Excellent across the range and Outstanding on the chicken with wild boar, nutritional balance reads Outstanding on every recipe bar the cod, and transparency reads Outstanding throughout.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 39%, Wild Boar 26%, sweet potato 4%, broccoli, dried organic apple* 0.7%, sunflower oil, dried spinach 0.7%, minerals 0.01% (glucosamine sulphate), salmon oil 0.1%, green lipped mussel powder 0.1%, dried seaweed, rosehip, parsley, marigold, yucca, nettle, peppermint, rosemary, aniseed. *From certified organic production. NL-BIO-01. EU/ non-EU agriculture.

Each pâté opens with its animal and a percentage: beef and lamb and chicken at 66%, cod with herring and the multi-meat recipes at 65%. Protein converts to between 38.2% and 47.8% of dry matter depending on the recipe, and the meat is the reason the readings sit where they do.

Behind the meat is a small, tidy plant list. Organic carrots and peas at 2% each on most recipes, sweet potato, broccoli, dried spinach at 0.7% and organic dried apple at 0.7%, with sunflower oil where the recipe needs a lighter fat. No cereal appears on any label, and the estimated carbohydrate runs from 9.1% to 26.0% of dry matter, the cod recipe being the outlier at the top. Those carbohydrate numbers are not measured. They come out by difference, and wet food makes that method read high.

Joint support is written into the minerals themselves: glucosamine sulphate appears within the 0.01% mineral entry and green lipped mussel powder at 0.1%. Both are gentle amounts, the sort of thing a small dog with slightly creaky back legs benefits from over time rather than a dose that will do anything dramatic in a week.

Then the flourish, and it is a long one: dried seaweed, rosehip, parsley, marigold, yucca, nettle, peppermint, rosemary and aniseed, none of them quantified. The added panel is where the numbers come back, with vitamin D3 at 200 IU per kilo, vitamin E at 20 mg, biotin at 60 ug and chelated zinc, manganese and copper. Chelated minerals are the more absorbable form. The cod recipe swaps that panel for a vitamin A led one with sulphate minerals instead.

Chicken at 39% with wild boar at 26%, and much the richest pâté of the seven: fat converts to 43.6% of dry matter on an estimated 148 kcal per 100g, with moisture down at 72.5%. Portions here are the smallest in the range.

Petite is made in one size, a 100g portion, across all seven recipes.

The maker's own guide feeds a 3kg dog 200 to 300 grams a day, a 7kg dog 400 to 500 grams, and a 12kg dog 600 to 700 grams. That puts a small dog somewhere between two and seven portions depending on its size and how much it moves.