Denes Senior Tins: With Turkey, Rabbit & Rice review

Our scoring places both tins in the Good band. The typical adult wet food comes in a band above that, and the grain accounts for most of the distance. Rice at 10% with barley alongside takes the estimated carbohydrate to 40.9% of dry matter against a typical of 15.8%, and the declared meat comes to around 30% of the tin. Nutritional balance lands at Average as a result, with protein and processing holding Good.

Transparency reads Outstanding, though, and that is worth saying out loud, because these labels print percentages for their meats and their cereals where a good many senior tins retreat into category terms. A milder analysis is also often the point of a senior recipe, not a shortfall in it. Knowing precisely how much rice is in the tin puts you in a position to judge that for your own dog.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 12%, pork 10%, rice 10%, turkey 4%, rabbit 4%, barley, minerals, herbs (peppermint, parsley and cumin), seaweed.

Chicken opens both labels, at 16% on the chicken and lamb tin and 12% on the turkey and rabbit, with pork at 10% behind it on each. Pork is the quiet workhorse of this range. It is palatable and easy on the digestion, and still novel enough that a lot of older dogs will not have met much of it. The garnish meats are the ones the tins are named for and they sit at 4% each, so lamb, turkey and rabbit are there for flavour and for variety.

The cereal is the defining feature. Rice is declared at 10% on both tins and barley joins it, at 3% on the chicken and lamb recipe and without a figure on the turkey and rabbit. Both are gentle grains for an older gut, and rice especially so. Barley adds useful fibre and a range of micronutrients. Between them they take the estimated carbohydrate to 40.9% of dry matter. That is well clear of what the typical adult wet food carries.

The analysis is deliberately mild: protein at 27.3% of dry matter, fat at 18.2%, moisture declared at 78.0%. For an older dog eating for maintenance and prone to putting weight on, a lower fat tin is genuinely useful. Current thinking on ageing dogs does lean towards keeping protein up, though. If your dog is losing condition, mention it to your vet and look at what else is going into the bowl alongside this.

Around the meat and the grain sit minerals, a named herb blend of peppermint, parsley and cumin, and seaweed. Naming the herbs rather than hiding behind a category term is a small courtesy that a surprising number of makers skip, and there is no garlic in either of these two recipes. Seaweed brings iodine and trace minerals naturally. That counts for something beside such a brief printed additive table.

That table declares vitamins A, D3 and E with copper as cupric sulphate, and stops. No figures appear against zinc, iodine, manganese or selenium. Whatever else the recipe needs is coming from the seaweed and from the minerals entry in the composition.

Chicken drops to 12% to make room for turkey at 4% and rabbit at 4%, and barley appears without a percentage against it. Rabbit is the reason to pick this one. Most dogs will never have met it. It is lean and easily digested, and rarely found in a senior tin at all. Turkey is lighter than chicken and often suits a dog eating smaller meals.

Sold in 400g cans, singly and in cases of 12.

Both tins carry the same estimated energy figure of 86 kcal per 100g, so the portions match. For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition our estimate is about 971 grams a day. That is two and a half cans give or take, on a maintenance need of roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard estimate).

An older dog with a quieter routine will usually need less than a maintenance figure suggests. As captured, the feeding table on these tins does not read sensibly, so work from the estimate above.