Coya Freeze-Dried Adult: Pork review

Freeze drying keeps very good company, and this range keeps up with it: the typical freeze-dried food sits in our Outstanding band and all five Coya recipes are in that band alongside it. Under the headline, protein and processing reads Outstanding on every recipe, and so do nutritional balance, transparency and value. A range rarely posts a sheet this even.

The five all finish inside our Outstanding band, the fish a shade behind its stablemates, so nothing in the scoring picks a winner for you. Let your dog's protein history do the choosing instead, and treat the fish option as the one that needs an extra look if you are avoiding a particular species.

Ingredients, as declared: 80% Pork, 6% Sweet Potato, 4.5% Carrot, 3% Pea, 2% Pear, 2% Apple, Vitamins & Minerals

Freeze drying is the whole argument here. The food goes into a freezer first, and the water is then pulled out under vacuum at low temperature. Extrusion heat never touches the meat, so the 80% printed on the front is 80% of what actually lands in the bowl. Declared moisture runs from 4.0% to 6.0% across the range, and energy from 446 to 560 kcal per 100g. That is why a day's food looks so small next to the same day of tinned food.

Each recipe names its animal and mostly stops there. Beef, chicken and pork are declared as single entries at 80%, the Turkey breaks its 80% down into 56% meat, 16% heart and 8% liver, and the Fish splits 50% white fish and 30% salmon. Heart and liver are worth having, since organs carry a density of vitamins and trace minerals that muscle meat alone does not. The Turkey is the only label here that shows you exactly how much of each went in.

The plant side is small. Every entry is named and carries a percentage. Sweet potato leads at 6% or 6.5%, then carrot at 4.5% or pumpkin at 3%, pea at 3% or 4%, and a fruit pair at 2% each drawn from apple, pear, strawberry, blackberry and tomato. Whole peas at this level are a sensible inclusion and not a filler. They bring fibre and micronutrients with them. Carbohydrate is estimated at 8.0% to 9.0% as fed, converting to between 8.4% and 9.4% of dry matter, which sits right around the 9.1% typical of freeze-dried food.

The analysis reads as the label promises. Protein converts to between 45.3% and 49.5% of dry matter and fat to between 31.9% and 34.4%, a genuinely meat-driven pair of ranges with almost nothing padding them out. A dog moving here from a cereal-based food is making a real change in what its dinner is made of, so a slow week of mixing pays off.

The added panel is dosed in print on every recipe. Vitamin A comes at 2500 IU and vitamin D3 at 250 IU. Vitamin E is at 50 mg, zinc at 15 mg, iron at 10 mg, copper at 1.5 mg and organic selenium at 0.02 mg. Calcium pantothenate at 1.5 mg is on the same panel and, despite how it reads, that is a B vitamin rather than a calcium source, so no calcium figure appears on these labels at all.

Pork at 80% with pear and apple at 2% each rounding off the list. This is the most energy-dense label of the five at 560 kcal per 100g, so portions run smallest. Pork remains a meat a great many dogs have simply never been given, which makes it a natural place to start when the common poultries have worn out their welcome.

The Beef, Chicken, Pork and Turkey are £46.65 a kilo and the Fish is £53.83. Every recipe comes in 150g and 750g packs with 6 x 150g and 3 x 750g multipacks behind them, except the Fish, whose larger pack is 650g.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs somewhere between 150 and 188 grams a day depending on the recipe. The target is around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75 is the standard maintenance estimate). That runs from £7.00 a day on the Pork through to £8.79 a day on the Beef, the spread following energy density, since the richest recipes feed in the smallest portions.