Carnilove Pate Pouches: Turkey & Pheasant review

All six pouches finish in our Excellent band, five level with each other and the Turkey & Venison a shade ahead. That consistency makes rotating between them straightforward. Wet food does well on our scoring generally and a typical adult wet food already reaches the Excellent band, which is exactly where every pouch here sits.

Nutritional balance and transparency read Outstanding across all six, with protein and processing Excellent on five of them and Outstanding on the venison pouch.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey 44 %, Pheasant 26%, broth, raspberry leaves 4%, pea flour, linseed oil, pea fibre.

The construction never varies. Turkey at 44% and a second named animal at 26% open every label, so more than two thirds of each pouch is meat you can put a name and a number to. Protein converts to between 37.6% and 40.6% of dry matter and fat to between 31.5% and 38.9%, which makes these rich, dense pâtés.

Broth follows the meat, and then a single plant at 4% that gives each pouch its character. That is rose petals with the buffalo, timothy grass with the duck, raspberry leaves with the pheasant, carrot with the quail, strawberry leaves with the venison and rosehips with the wild boar. At that share they are a signature more than a nutritional argument, though it is a pretty one.

Pea flour and pea fibre carry what little plant matter is left. That gives an unusual analysis. Account for fibre and ash and the carbohydrate estimate falls to nothing, against 15.8% of dry matter on a typical adult wet food. The flip side is crude fibre running from 10.0% to 20.0% of dry matter. That is high for wet food, and it keeps the pâté firm as well as feeding the gut.

The only added fat here is linseed oil, a good choice that carries plant omega-3. Because nothing marine goes into these pouches, they are one of the few properly fish-free wet ranges on the shelf, which is a useful thing for a dog that reacts to fish.

The added panel is fully dosed. Vitamin A comes in at 750 IU per kilo, vitamin D3 at 200 IU and vitamin E at 67 mg. The minerals read zinc at 12 mg, iron at 10 mg and copper at 4 mg, with taurine at 800 mg. Cassia gum appears among the technological additives as the thickener that sets the loaf. It is standard practice in wet food, and worth a look if you like every entry on a label to be a food. Calcium is the figure that moves most between recipes, from 1.25% of dry matter on the duck pouch to 3.98% on the venison.

Turkey at 44% with pheasant at 26% and raspberry leaves at 4%. At 20.0% of dry matter this pouch carries the most fibre in the range, and calcium reads 2.78%. That makes it a firm, bulky pâté.

£10.50 a kilo, in 300g pouches sold in boxes of 12.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to somewhere between £6.84 and £8.32 a day, or 651 to 792 grams, once maintenance is put at about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). Those two figures sit close together: the label's own guide for that dog is 600 to 900 grams.