Dr Veneta Freeze-Dried Stay Shiny review

Judging this one starts with the company it keeps, because freeze dried food as a category sits in our Outstanding band. Stay Shiny is in that band too, a shade above the middle of the field, which in company this strong says a good deal for the label. Its pillars come back Outstanding for protein and processing, for nutritional balance and for transparency, a clean run across all three.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey (50%), Salmon (30%), Carrot (17%), Blackberry, Beet pulp, Seaweed, Fermented Saccharomyces cerevisiae(as a source of prebiotic MOS and beta glucans), Chicory root (as a source of prebiotic FOS), Glucosamine, Chondroitin sulphate, Yucca, Dandelion root, Green tea, Hawthorn leaf, Nettle, Rosehip, Parsley, Chamomile, Lemon Balm.

The point of freeze drying is that almost nothing survives it except the food. Moisture is declared at 1.3%, so the as fed analysis and the dry matter analysis are nearly the same set of numbers, fat reading 42.6% and 43.1% in turn. In practice that means small portions, a strong smell and a bag that will keep in a cupboard rather than a freezer.

Turkey at 50% and salmon at 30% is a generous split, and the salmon is what the name is really about. Oily fish is where the long chain omega 3 fats live, and a dog's coat tends to be one of the first places the diet shows itself. Turkey brings the leaner half of the meat share, and between them the animal content reaches 80% of the recipe.

Carrot at 17% is a big single vegetable inclusion by any measure, and it carries the plant work more or less alone. Cooked carrot is a reliable source of vitamin A along with soluble fibre and natural antioxidants, and it is easily digested once softened. Blackberry follows without a figure attached, and from that point on the label stops printing percentages altogether.

With this much fat in the recipe, protein settles at 40.3% of dry matter and the carbohydrate estimate at 9.2%, so the calories here come overwhelmingly from the animals rather than from anything grown. Crude ash converts to 6.5%. Where the meat is muscle and the rest is fish, the mineral fraction sits about as light as it gets.

The rest of the composition is the brand's standing toolkit. Prebiotic MOS and beta glucans arrive with the fermented Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and prebiotic FOS with the chicory root. Both are there to keep the gut population well fed. Beet pulp supplies fermentable fibre, seaweed a spread of minerals including iodine, and glucosamine with chondroitin covers the joints.

The label closes on herbs: dandelion root, hawthorn leaf, nettle and rosehip, then parsley, chamomile and lemon balm, with green tea among them for its catechins. What the page does not carry anywhere is a vitamin and mineral panel, and no synthetic premix is declared for this food at all. The printed detail has a real gap there, though nothing in the bag is at fault. If this food is going to be your dog's only dinner, the maker will tell you how the micronutrition is covered.

£29.90 a kilo. It comes in 125g and 500g packs, and forms part of the 625g Discover Set and the 2.5kg Wellness Set.

Because so much of the energy here comes from fat, portions run small: roughly 150 grams a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, working out at about £4.48 a day. The maintenance estimate behind that is 840 kcal a day, calculated as 110 × bodyweight^0.75.