Darf Complete Adult Dry Small Breed review

This recipe takes our Excellent band word, clear of the Good band where the middle of the cold-pressed field settles. Transparency reads Outstanding, which follows from a meat block written out cut by cut with figures beside each one, an unusual amount of detail for a small breed recipe. Nutritional balance reads Average. The size of the plant fraction holds it there, and the animal side is sound. Read together, the pillars describe a food whose ingredients list is doing better than its analysis, which is a decent problem for a food to have.

Ingredients, as declared: 60% meat (12% chicken necks, 12% beef meat, 9% lamb meat, 9% goat meat, 6% chicken meat, 3% beef heart, 3% beef lung, 3% beef tripe, 3% beef liver), 15% dried carrot, 14% dried apple, 5% millet, 2% krill, 2% coconut oil, 1% nettle

Cold pressing is the manufacturing choice underneath everything else here. Ingredients are pressed together under low heat rather than cooked and expanded at the temperatures extrusion needs, which gives a hard, dense pellet that softens and breaks apart once wet. For a small mouth that is a helpful property, and it is the reason the format has spread as fast as it has.

Nine entries make up the meat, and the split rewards a close read. Chicken necks at 12% are bone-in poultry and beef meat at 12% is the red muscle share. Lamb and goat sit at 9% each, chicken meat adds 6%, and beef heart, lung, tripe and liver take 3% apiece. That organ quartet is the part most labels leave out, and it carries the vitamin and trace mineral load that muscle meat alone would miss.

The plant side leans fruity: dried carrot takes 15% and dried apple 14%, and both bring soluble fibre and natural sugars with them. Millet at 5% is a gentle grain and gluten free, easily digested too. Marine omega fats come from krill at 2%, coconut oil at 2% is a fast-burning fat, and nettle at 1% finishes the list.

The analysis suits the job. Protein converts to 26.8% of dry matter and fat to 12.4%. At 424 kcal per 100g the recipe sits well above the 351 kcal typical for cold-pressed food, which is exactly what a small stomach needs from a pellet. Carbohydrate estimates at 52.8% of dry matter against a 43.2% typical, the trade that comes with dried fruit and vegetables taking almost a third of the bag.

Calcium converts to 1.13% of dry matter, at the lower end of the comfortable adult range and a reasonable place for a small breed recipe to sit. One line covers the micronutrients, a vitamin and mineral supplement at 0.5%, and no doses are printed against the individual vitamins or minerals.

£6.37 a kilo, in a 4kg bag, which is the only size offered.

The standard reference for our day rates is a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). On this food that comes to roughly 198 grams, or £1.26 a day. A dog small enough for this recipe will eat a fraction of that, and the bag will last accordingly.