Denes Adult Tins: Chicken with Rabbit review

Our scoring settles both tins in the Good band. The typical adult wet food comes in a band above that, and two things account for the distance, neither of them dramatic. Wheat is listed with no percentage against it and sits third, so a meaningful share of each tin is cereal. The additive panel declares only vitamins A, D3 and E alongside copper, where most tins print a fuller table. Set against that, the meat is named animal by animal with figures beside it. Protein converts to 36.4% of dry matter and fat stays moderate at 22.7%, a comfortable everyday analysis for a settled adult dog.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 33%, pork 10%, wheat, rabbit 4%, minerals, herbs (peppermint, parsley and cumin), seaweed.

Chicken leads both labels, at 33% on the rabbit tin and 30% on the tripe, and pork at 10% sits behind it on each. Not many British dog foods use pork, so it suits a dog who has already been round the usual poultry and beef. It cooks up highly palatable too. Between the two named meats and the garnish, the animal share comes to a little under half of each tin.

Wheat is the third entry on both labels and it carries no percentage, so its exact share is the piece of information the tin does not give you. For most dogs wheat is simply a cereal doing its job and giving the recipe energy and body. For the minority who react to grain, it is the single entry on this label to be aware of, and better known before you buy a case.

The garnish meats are what separate the two tins and both are good ones. Rabbit is a genuinely novel protein for most dogs. It is lean and highly digestible, and rarely found at any level in tinned food. Beef tripe is the opposite kind of ingredient, unglamorous but rich in protein and fat and famously good at coaxing a dog back to the bowl. At 4% each they are a seasoning. Hold that in mind when the flavour name suggests otherwise.

Around the meat sit minerals, a named herb blend and, on the rabbit tin, seaweed. The herbs are itemised rather than hidden behind a category term, which is more than most tins manage, and seaweed brings a natural source of iodine and trace minerals. The tripe tin adds carrots for a little fibre and beta carotene, and its herb blend includes garlic in the small amounts this brand has always used.

The added panel is where these labels are thinnest. Each of vitamins A, D3 and E carries a figure, and copper is dosed as cupric sulphate, but zinc, iodine, manganese and selenium are not declared. That does not mean they are absent, since the minerals entry in the composition will be carrying some of them. It does mean this is a label you take a little more on trust than the analysis alone would suggest.

Rabbit at 4% is the point of difference, and it is a meat a great many dogs will never have met. Chicken runs highest here at 33%, the herb blend is peppermint, parsley and cumin with no garlic in it, and seaweed closes the list. It is also the higher fibre of the two tins, with crude fibre converting to 6.8% of dry matter, and marginally the lighter at an estimated 88 kcal per 100g.

Sold in 400g cans, either on their own or in a case of 12.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat around 955 grams a day on the rabbit tin and about 935 grams on the tripe. Both come to a little over two cans. Those figures come from a maintenance need of roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard estimate) set against our estimated energy figures of 88 and 90 kcal per 100g.

The feeding guide printed on the tins does not scale sensibly as captured, so the amounts above are the better starting point.