Darf Complete Adult Dry Light review

This recipe carries our Good band word, level with the middle of the cold-pressed field. Protein and processing reads Excellent and transparency Outstanding, which is what a nine-entry meat block with a figure against every line will do for a label. Nutritional balance reads Poor rather than higher, and that is the honest consequence of a lighter recipe: pulling fat down to this level pushes the plant side up, and the analysis shows it. That trade is what you are paying for if your dog needs the calories held back.

Ingredients, as declared: 60% meat (12% beef meat, 12 % chicken necks, 9% beef tripe, 6% lamb meat, 6% goat meat, 6% chicken meat, 3% beef heart, 3% beef lung, 3% beef liver), 10% raw dried carrot, 10% raw dried apple, 10% millet, 5% krill, 2% coconut oil, 1% nettle, 0.5% water

The meat block is unusually detailed for a food at this weight of recipe. Beef meat and chicken necks lead at 12% each, then beef tripe at 9%, lamb, goat and chicken meat at 6% apiece, and beef heart, lung and liver at 3% each. Chicken necks are bone-in poultry, which is where a good part of the mineral content arrives, and the organ trio brings the vitamin dense material that muscle meat alone cannot.

Tripe deserves its own mention. It is the stomach of a ruminant, unglamorous to look at and very kind to a dog's gut. At 9% this is a real inclusion, not a garnish. Alongside the liver and lung, it is the sort of entry that separates a label written for dogs from one written for shoppers.

The plant side has been given room to work. Millet at 10% is the grain, gluten free and easily digested, with raw dried carrot and raw dried apple at 10% each providing fibre. Krill at 5% is a generous marine omega source for a recipe of this kind. Coconut oil at 2% and nettle at 1% close the list, and 0.5% water is declared as an ingredient in its own right.

The analysis is where the word Light earns itself. Fat converts to just 7.3% of dry matter and protein to 20.8%, with energy at 292 kcal per 100g, a good way under the 351 kcal typical of cold-pressed food. That is the whole design: a dog on a diet can be given a satisfying volume of food without the day's total running away.

The counterweight is carbohydrate, which estimates at 61.8% of dry matter against a 43.2% typical for the format. Any recipe that removes fat has to replace the space with something, and here it is millet, carrot and apple doing that job. Calcium converts to 1.41% of dry matter, a sound adult figure, while the micronutrients are declared as a vitamin and mineral supplement at 0.5% without individual doses being printed.

£5.61 a kilo, sold in 4kg and 14kg bags.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs roughly 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), which works out at about 288 grams of this recipe, or £1.61 a day. A dog being fed to lose condition rather than hold it will be given less than that figure, not more.