Country Dog Premium Grain Free Tins With Tripe: Chicken with Tripe and Veg review

The two tins finish together in our Excellent band, level with the typical adult wet food, which is a strong place for a tin to land. Add the named meats and the tripe together and the animal side comes to 66% of each tin, a high figure for a wet food. Estimated carbohydrate stays low: the beef at 13.5% of dry matter, the chicken at 10.0%, against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food.

The pillars run from Good up to Outstanding here, which is a strong set rather than an even one. What sets the ceiling is what the labels do not say: tripe that is not tied to an animal, an added panel with no vitamin E and no selenium, and no declared calcium. None of that is a worry in the bowl, and this remains a well built tin by the standards of the shelf.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (47%), Tripe (19%), Dried Carrots (1.2%), Dried Potatoes (1.2%), Minerals, Rapeseed Oil (0.2%), Prebiotic Mannan Oligosaccharides (0.01%), Glucosamine (0.004%), Chondroitin (0.002%), Dried Cranberries (0.002%), Yucca Extract (0.002%).

Tripe is the reason to look at these tins. It is the stomach of grazing animals, unusually easy to digest and rich in protein and natural oils, and it has the sort of smell that turns a reluctant eater into an enthusiastic one. At 21% on the beef tin and 19% on the chicken, tripe is doing real work in the recipe, though neither label pins it to an animal.

The named meat around it does the rest. The beef tin runs beef at 29% with chicken at 16% behind the tripe, and the chicken tin is simply chicken at 47%. Add the entries up and both come to 66% animal content, which is where a wet food earns its keep. The beef converts to 38.5% protein of dry matter and the chicken to 40.0%, with fat at 34.6% and 36.0%. These are rich tins by any measure.

The plant side is deliberately slight, with dried carrots and dried potatoes at 1.2% each. Carrots bring vitamin A and antioxidants and potatoes bring starch, though at these quantities they only season the tin. That is the reason the carbohydrate estimate stays where it does.

Rapeseed oil handles the added fat, at 1.2% on the beef tin and 0.2% on the chicken, and the label names it outright. Saturated fat is low and the choice is a perfectly sensible one, and anyway the meat and tripe carry most of the fat here.

The tail of each list is identical. The prebiotic mannan oligosaccharides at 0.01% are from yeast cell walls, there to encourage the good bacteria. Glucosamine at 0.004% and chondroitin at 0.002% are a nod to the joints, and dried cranberries and yucca extract close at 0.002% apiece. The added panel prints doses for vitamin A, vitamin D3, zinc, iron, copper, manganese and iodine, and leaves vitamin E and selenium off. Calcium is not declared.

Chicken at 47% with tripe at 19%, and no third animal on the list. Protein converts to 40.0% of dry matter, the higher of the two tins, and estimated carbohydrate is the lower at 10.0%. The rapeseed oil drops to 0.2%, since chicken brings plenty of its own fat, and energy is estimated at 120 kcal per 100g.

Sold in 395g cans. No current per kilo figure sits against either tin.

As a guide, work on about 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is around 679 grams a day of the beef tin or 699 grams of the chicken.