Carnilove True Fresh Adult Large Breed review

A place in our Good band puts this level with the typical adult dry food. Its strength is transparency, which reads Outstanding: the duck is fresh, named and generous, and the mineral panel is dosed in print. The main soft spot is a starch load that creeps higher than the headline suggests.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh duck (60%), yellow peas, beef fat (4%), dried apple pulp (3.3%), hydrolysed liver (3%), chickpeas (3%), red lentils, pumpkin (2%), 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%).

Sixty per cent fresh duck is a strong opening, and duck is an easily digested, well-liked meat that big dogs rarely refuse. The caveat that applies to every fresh-meat-only recipe applies here too. Most of that weight is water, and once it leaves in the oven the finished protein converts to 30.0% of dry matter, at the moderate end for a food in this class.

With no dried meat in support, more falls to the plant side than the label's opening line implies. Pea flour joins yellow peas, chickpeas and red lentils to bring the estimated carbohydrate to 40.6% of dry matter. That is still below the 46.2% typical of adult dry food, though it is the highest figure among this recipe's siblings.

Beef fat at 4% and salmon oil at 2% supply energy and omega 3s, and dried apple pulp at 3.3% adds gentle fibre. Egg shells stand in for added calcium, a food-derived route to a mineral that large breeds need dosed sensibly.

The joint entries big-dog owners look for are here, glucosamine from hydrolysed crustacean shells at 0.022% and chondroitin from cartilage extract at 0.014%, but the percentages tell the truth: these are token levels. The supplementation that is genuinely well dosed sits in the additive panel, led by taurine at 1,500 mg per kilo with a fully declared trace mineral line.

The finishing herbs and berries, from sea buckthorn to thyme, are printed at honest trace fractions. They read nicely and harm nothing, and the recipe stands on its duck, which is exactly as it should be.

£6.66 a kilo across 1.5kg, 4kg and 12kg bags, the biggest of which is the natural pick for a large dog.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would get through about 231 grams a day, around £1.54, on the standard maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal daily (110 × bodyweight^0.75). A genuinely large dog scales up from there.