Celtic Connection Wet Food: Lamb with Goat review

These three finish level with one another. All three tins take our Excellent band, and two of the three print an identical analysis panel, so the animals named on the label are what separate them, not the nutrition figures.

Our scoring rates the wet shelf highly, so a typical adult wet tin already earns an Excellent placing, and these three finish just above that middle. Transparency and nutritional balance read Outstanding across all three, and the Chicken with Turkey lifts its protein and processing reading to Outstanding as well. Every tin is a properly meat-led recipe with its broth and its supplements declared in full.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb & Goat (35% Lamb, 30% Goat, 29.48% Broth), Sweet Potato, Pumpkin, Minerals, Cranberries, Artichoke, Mint, Schizochytrium Microalgae, MSM (0.1%), Glucosamine (0.09%), Chondroitin (0.03%)

Each label opens by breaking the meat down: 45% chicken with 20% turkey, or 45% turkey with 10% duck and 10% goose, or 35% lamb with 30% goat. The broth is then given its own 29.48%, which is a more candid way of writing a wet label than folding the liquid into the meat figure. Protein converts to 50.5% of dry matter on the poultry tins and 41.6% on the lamb and goat, both good readings for something fed out of a tin.

Cereal is absent from all three labels, and sweet potato and pumpkin do the starch work. The estimated carbohydrate lands at 10.0% of dry matter on the poultry tins and 14.4% on the lamb, both under the 15.8% a typical adult wet food shows. Both figures come from an estimate by difference and not from measurement, so if anything the real numbers sit lower.

Schizochytrium microalgae is the entry worth noticing. It is a cultured marine algae grown for its long-chain omega-3, the same fatty acids a fish oil would supply. These tins deliver those fats without a single fish ingredient on the list. That combination is genuinely hard to find if your dog reacts to fish.

The joint package comes with figures printed: MSM at 0.1%, glucosamine at 0.09% and chondroitin at 0.03%. Those are supportive everyday amounts, so a dog already on a prescribed joint regime should stay on it and take this as the dinner underneath. Cranberries, artichoke and mint finish the list, and the added panel is short and dosed, with vitamin D3 at 200 IU per kilo and chelated zinc, manganese and copper, the lamb tin dropping the copper.

Lamb at 35% with goat at 30%, the only red meat tin and by far the richest at 147 kcal per 100g, with fat at 30.4% of dry matter against 25.0% on the poultry tins. Goat is an unusual protein in British dog food, and when the usual options have been used up it is a sensible next port of call. This is also the one label whose added panel leaves out copper.

All three recipes are £10.63 a kilo. Tins are 200g and 400g, singly or in packs of 6.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition that works out at about £6.07 a day on the lamb and goat tin and £7.83 on the other two, or 571 to 737 grams. The maintenance estimate behind that is about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). A less active dog of that weight is given 635 grams of the poultry tins or 493 grams of the lamb on the maker's own guide.