Country Pursuit Cold Pressed: Chicken & Sweet Potato review

The chicken recipe carries our Outstanding band word and the fish our Excellent, both of them clear of the middle of the cold-pressed field. They do not finish together though: the chicken version is the stronger of the two, with the fish a band behind it. Nutritional balance is the pillar that separates them: Excellent for the chicken, Good for the fish. Protein and processing reads Outstanding on both, and so does transparency. Those bands are earned by the printed micronutrient doses and by a named meat leading each list.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried Ground Chicken 42%, Sweet Potato 20%, Beet Pulp, Peas, Chicken Oil 3.3%, Carrots, Apples, Seaweed, Chicory Inulin, Fennel Seed, Sage Leaf, Thyme, Nettle, Oregano, Chondroitin, Glucosamine, Turmeric, Dandelion Root, Linseed Oil, Rapeseed Oil. Protein source & energy Dried Ground Chicken: 42% · Energy: 360 kcal per 100 g

Start with what cold pressing means for this food. The ingredients are pressed together at a much lower temperature than kibble is extruded at, which gives a denser pellet that breaks down rather than expands once your dog has eaten it. Owners who have moved a fast eater onto the format tend not to move back.

The meat is declared in its dried form, which is a more honest reading than it first looks. Dried ground chicken at 42% and dried ground ocean fish at 49% have already had their water removed, so those percentages survive into the finished pellet in a way a fresh meat percentage does not. Protein converts to 38.1% of dry matter on the chicken and 37.1% on the fish, both healthy figures for the format.

The plant side is led by sweet potato at 20%, with beet pulp for gentle fermentable fibre and peas adding bulk plus a little plant protein. Carbohydrate converts to 34.5% of dry matter on both recipes, a good way below the 43.2% typical of cold-pressed food. The meat really is doing more of the work here than the starch. Chicory inulin at the tail is a prebiotic, and it feeds the bacteria that live further down the gut.

The micronutrient panel is printed in full with doses, running from vitamins A, D3 and E at the head down to the trace minerals. Sodium selenite at 0.1 mg per kilogram is the smallest entry of the lot. Seeing those numbers written out is rarer than it should be, and it is the main reason transparency reads Outstanding on both recipes.

Glucosamine and chondroitin both appear by name, which is more than most joint claims amount to. Neither carries a printed dose, so there is no judging the strength of that support from the label. Calcium converts to 1.79% of dry matter on the chicken and 1.64% on the fish, comfortable adult figures. The herb tail, fennel seed through oregano with turmeric and dandelion root behind, sits at the seasoning end of the list and reads as character.

No meat but dried ground chicken at 42% is named anywhere on this label, with chicken oil at 3.3% supplying the added fat and linseed oil joining the rapeseed at the tail. It is the lower energy recipe at 360 kcal per 100g, and the leaner of the two with fat at 10.7% of dry matter. That is why it carries a weight watching note as well as a joint one.

The Chicken & Sweet Potato is £6.00 a kilo and the Ocean Fish & Sweet Potato £6.15. Both come in 3kg and 10kg bags, with a 200g sample pack available.

Take a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing about 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75). These energy figures put the daily portion at roughly 233 grams for the chicken recipe, or 227 grams for the fish, and that is £1.40 a day either way. Country Pursuit's own guide for a 10kg to 20kg dog is 120 to 240 grams.