Dr Veneta Freeze-Dried Stay Well review

Freeze dried food sets a high bar and the typical member of that field lands in our Outstanding band. Stay Well reaches the same band, holding its own in the middle of a strong field, which in this company describes a very good label indeed. Protein and processing, nutritional balance and transparency each read Outstanding, so the label is doing everything that is asked of it.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (50%), Rabbit (26%), Apple (10%), Pumpkin (9%), Mint, 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.

Freeze drying takes the water away while the food is frozen, so the ingredients hold on to their shape, their smell and most of their nutrition. At 1.5% moisture there is next to nothing left to remove. That is why 100 grams of this carries 416 kcal, and why the dry matter figures land only a whisker above the as fed ones. The typical freeze dried food runs nearer 458 kcal per 100g, so this is the softer end of that scale.

Chicken at 50% and rabbit at 26% make up the meat, and the rabbit is the reason to look twice. Dog food uses rabbit seldom, so for most dogs it counts as a novel protein. That is what makes it useful once the familiar meats have started causing trouble, and it digests easily besides. Chicken still leads the recipe, so read the rabbit as the interesting partner rather than as the whole story.

Apple at 10% and pumpkin at 9% carry the plant side, with mint named separately behind them. Pumpkin is where much of the 5.0% crude fibre comes from, and 5.1% of dry matter is a properly fibrous reading for a food of this kind. No grain, potato or pulse appears anywhere, which keeps the carbohydrate estimate at 7.0%.

Behind the food itself sits a considered support list. Chicory root is the declared source of prebiotic FOS. Fermented Saccharomyces cerevisiae carries the MOS and beta glucans, and beet pulp adds the fermentable fibre those two work with. Glucosamine and chondroitin cover the joints. Seaweed contributes iodine and trace minerals, and yucca is the usual pick when a maker is thinking about stool odour.

Crude ash reaches 11.5%, which converts to 11.7% of dry matter, and ash is simply the mineral fraction left when a food is burned down. It is the biggest figure on this analysis after protein and fat, yet no calcium figure is printed anywhere and no added vitamin and mineral panel exists on the page at all. That combination is the one real gap in the printed detail here. If the dog eating it is a growing large breed, ask the maker for that figure.

The label finishes on the brand's herbal set, dandelion root, green tea, hawthorn leaf and nettle, with rosehip, parsley, chamomile and lemon balm behind them, none of them carrying a figure. Green tea is the one with the clearest job of the group, bringing the catechins it has long been valued for.

£29.90 a kilo, in 125g and 500g packs, and included in the 625g Discover Set and the 2.5kg Wellness Set.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition takes around 202 grams a day of this recipe, which comes to about £6.04 a day. The estimate assumes 840 kcal a day, from 110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance calculation.