Cooper & Co Glossy review

The Good band is where our scoring leaves this one, the same rung the typical adult dry food occupies. Half the recipe is a single named red meat, and the fresh and dried portions each get their own figure. Carbohydrate is restrained at 43.7% of dry matter where adult dry food usually runs at 46.2%, and the trace minerals are dosed in print. The mineral load is the one thing keeping it from climbing further, with ash at 10.0% and calcium at 2.28% of dry matter. For an adult dog with a coat that needs attention, this is a well made and easy to read recipe.

Ingredients, as declared: Freshly Prepared Lamb (30%), Dried Lamb (20%), Tapioca (18%), Lentils, Peas (9.5%), Beet Pulp, Lamb Gravy (2%), Salmon Oil (1%), Brewer's Yeast, Minerals, Dried Rosemary, Fructooligosaccharides, Mannanoligosaccharides.

Lamb makes up half the recipe and the label shows its working. Freshly prepared lamb at 30% arrives full of water, and most of that goes in the oven. The dried lamb at 20% is what really underwrites the protein in the finished kibble, with lamb gravy at 2% adding flavour on top. Protein finishes at 27.2% of dry matter. Lamb is a red meat that most dogs digest easily and comparatively few have a history with, and that is part of why recipes aimed at skin and coat reach for it.

Tapioca at 18% is the leading plant ingredient, a starch pressed out of the cassava root that supplies energy and very little else. Lentils and peas at 9.5% sit behind it, both bringing fibre and some plant protein along with their starch. The list carries no grain at all, and the whole plant side still comes to a carbohydrate estimate of 43.7% of dry matter, under the 46.2% typical for adult dry food.

The coat case rests on the salmon oil at 1% and on the fat level itself, which sits at 14.9% of dry matter. Marine oil supplies the long chain omega 3s that skin uses without needing to convert them first, so it does more per gram than a plant source would. It is a small pour, so give a coat several weeks to answer, not several days. Fish is present, though, in what is otherwise a lamb recipe.

Dried rosemary is on the list as a natural antioxidant. That is its usual job in a kibble, slowing fats as they turn stale, and it is not there to season anything. The fermentable fibre falls to beet pulp, with fructooligosaccharides and mannanoligosaccharides nudging the gut flora. Brewer's yeast rounds things off as a natural source of B vitamins.

Of everything on this label, the trace mineral panel is the part most worth reading. Zinc is declared at 130 mg per kilo, iron at 160 mg, manganese at 110 mg, copper at 60 mg, iodine at 1.58 mg and selenium at 0.60 mg. Zinc in particular is the mineral skin leans on hardest, so seeing it dosed and dosed well on a food with this name is reassuring. The flip side of a full mineral panel is the ash figure of 10.0% and calcium at 2.28% of dry matter. Both sit at the top of the comfortable range for an adult dog, and growth is not what this recipe is for.

In money terms this is £7.00 a kilo, and the bags come in 1.5kg and 10kg.

Feeding a 15kg adult in moderate condition means roughly 234 grams a day, taking about 840 kcal a day as the target (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which lands at £1.64 a day. On the bag itself the guide runs from 255 to 340 grams for a dog between 20kg and 30kg, so the ribs are the better referee.