Carnilove True Fresh Adult: Duck review

The beef reaches our Excellent band and the other three land in our Good band, where the typical adult dry food settles too. Only the beef edges clear, and by a whisker at that, so flavour rather than ranking should choose between them. What holds them all there is a named fresh meat doing most of the work, carbohydrate held below what is typical for a dry food, and a fully dosed vitamin and mineral panel.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh duck (60%), yellow peas, beef fat (5%), hydrolysed liver (3%), chickpeas (3%), pumpkin (3%), red lentils, dried apple pulp (2.3%), salmon oil (2%), linseed, carrots, egg shells, potassium chloride, pea flour, dried sea buckthorn (0.2%), dried ginger root (0.1%), dried blueberries (0.1%), dried rosemary (0.1%), dried cranberries (0.1%), dried thyme (0.1%), hydrolysed crustacean shells (source of glucosamine, 0.022%), chicory root (source of fructo-oligosaccharides, 0.0163%), cartilage extract (source of chondroitin, 0.014%), brewer's yeast (source of mannan-oligosaccharides, 0.013%), Mojave yucca (0.0085%).

True Fresh means exactly that: the meat in these recipes goes in fresh, with no meat meal anywhere on the label. That is an honest construction with one consequence worth understanding. Fresh meat is mostly water, so a 60% declaration cooks down considerably, and protein in the finished kibble converts to between 31.1% and 33.3% of dry matter across the range. Respectable for a kibble, though a meal-backed recipe with the same headline would finish higher.

On the plant side it is yellow peas first, then chickpeas at 3%, red lentils and pea flour. Carbohydrate converts to between 37.2% and 38.6% of dry matter depending on the variety, usefully below the 46.2% typical of adult dry food.

Egg shells are the quiet clever touch, a natural calcium source doing the job a bare added mineral would otherwise do. Hydrolysed liver at 3% is the palatant, and a big part of why this range tends to go down well with dogs that turn their noses up at plainer kibble.

The energy and the omega 3s come from beef fat at 5% and salmon oil at 2%, and that holds for every variety in the range. It keeps the recipes consistent. It also means the duck is not purely duck and the turkey is not purely turkey. Only someone ruling species in or out needs to weigh that.

The tail of the label reads like a hedgerow, sea buckthorn, blueberries, cranberries, ginger and thyme, all at printed fractions of a percent. Beneath it sit trace-level joint and gut entries, glucosamine at 0.022% and chondroitin at 0.014%, plus taurine properly dosed at 1,500 mg per kilo and a fully declared mineral panel.

Fresh duck at 60%. Duck is a slightly fattier, distinctly flavoured bird that suits dogs who have grown tired of mainstream poultry, and it remains uncommon enough in dry food to feel like a genuine change.

The beef, duck and fish and turkey recipes are £6.66 a kilo, with the turkey slightly under them at £6.50. All four come in 1.5kg, 4kg and 12kg bags.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, daily feeding runs from about 225 to 233 grams depending on the variety. That works out between £1.48 and £1.55 a day on the standard maintenance estimate of roughly 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75).