Dachshund Superfood Veterinary Range: Skin and Coat Care review

Three of the four finish in our Good band, level with the middle of the adult dry shelf, and the weight and joint recipe sits a step below in our Average band. That is a fair result for recipes shaped around a job instead of a headline meat figure. Hydrolysed protein tends to read modestly on paper, and the protein declarations here are moderate by design. The band is earned on how much the labels declare and on the quality of what is in them. Beyond that one step down, the difference between them is the purpose rather than the placing.

Ingredients, as declared: Freshly Prepared Hydrolysed Salmon (35%), Potato, Sweet Potato, Hydrolysed Dried White Fish (14%), Salmon Oil (4%), Beet Pulp, Soya Oil (3%), Hydrolysed Salmon Gravy (2.5%), Minerals, Dried Algae (Schizochytrium sp.) (0.2%), Borage Oil (0.2%), Marigold (Source of Lutein)

Hydrolysis is the thread running through the whole range. Breaking protein into shorter fragments before it goes into the kibble makes it easier for a touchy gut to handle. It is also less likely to be spotted by an immune system that has decided it dislikes something. It is a real piece of engineering, not a label word, and it is on every bag here.

The starch and the binding come from potato and sweet potato in all four. Wheat, maize and rice are absent right across the range. Beet pulp handles fibre in three of the recipes, and three also carry a purified plant fibre, cellulose or lignocellulose, which is a white powder that adds bulk and almost no calories. It is a workmanlike inclusion, not a nourishing one, and in a dental or a weight recipe it is doing an obvious job.

Marigold appears on every label as a source of lutein, the pigment that gathers in the eye. It sits at the trace end of each list, so read it as a considered touch and not as the reason to choose the bag.

Only the digestive recipe keeps to one animal from top to bottom. The other three pair their headline species with a second marine source. That matters most on a strict elimination trial. For ordinary sensitive feeding it is a smaller point.

Salmon at 35% freshly prepared and hydrolysed, with hydrolysed dried white fish at 14% behind it. Then a deliberately built oil bench: salmon oil at 4%, soya oil at 3%, dried algae at 0.2% and borage oil at 0.2%. The algae supplies marine omega 3 without adding another fish, and borage oil brings gamma linolenic acid, the fatty acid most often chosen when skin is the thing being worked on. Soya oil is the entry to note, since soya sits on some dogs' avoid list. Fibre is the lowest of the four here at 2.7% of dry matter.

£9.00 a kilo across the range, sold in 1.5kg and 10kg bags of small kibble.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to between £1.98 and £2.40 a day, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The weight and joint recipe sits at the top of that range because it carries the fewest calories per bowl. These are small-breed bags, so a dachshund-sized dog will eat a fraction of those portions.