Earls Tender Paté: With Beef review

Our Good band takes the chicken tray, and the beef lands a band lower in Average. Protein and processing reads Average on both trays, while nutritional balance and transparency both come back Outstanding. What holds the pair where they are is the meat itself, written in category terms rather than named. For contrast, a typical adult wet food reaches our Excellent band, and it is the protein and processing reading that keeps these two trays short of it. None of that is a verdict on the food in the tray, which is a moderate, digestible paté of the sort dogs have eaten for generations.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives 55% (Including 4% Beef), Minerals, Various Sugars.

Meat and animal derivatives is the backbone of both recipes, at 55% on the beef tray and 60% on the chicken. The term is a legal catch-all for the fleshy parts of slaughtered warm-blooded land animals, and for whatever comes of processing their carcasses. It can cover fine material or ordinary material, and the mix can move between batches while the label stays identical. The 4% named on each front is the only part of it you can be certain of.

The chicken tray goes a little further than the beef, adding oils and fats with fish oil named at 0.2% inside it, and derivatives of vegetable origin with chicory named at 0.1%. Fish oil brings genuine omega-3 to the bowl, and chicory is the usual source of the prebiotic fibres that suit the large intestine. Both are small inclusions, but both are the label choosing to name something.

Various sugars sit on both lists. Sugar goes into wet food because dogs enjoy it, and no figure is printed, so the amount is not something you can check. Worth a thought for a dog who already carries a little extra weight.

The analysis is the same on both trays and it is unremarkable in the good sense. Protein at 9.0% as fed converts to 47.4% of dry matter, fat converts to 26.3%, and carbohydrate converts to an estimated 13.2%, a shade under the 15.8% typical of adult wet food. Moisture is 81.0%, which is simply what a paté is, and energy runs at an estimated 83 kcal per 100g on the beef and a declared 87 kcal on the chicken.

Both added panels are fully dosed, which is the most generous thing either label does. The beef prints vitamin D3 at 75 IU, vitamin E at 30 mg, zinc at 15 mg, manganese at 6 mg, copper at 1 mg and iodine at 0.3 mg. The chicken lifts the vitamin D3 to 140 iu and holds vitamin E at 30 mg, with zinc at 12 mg, manganese at 1 mg, copper at 0.5 mg and iodine at 0.3 mg.

The shorter of the two lists, with meat and animal derivatives at 55%, beef named at 4%, minerals and various sugars, and no added oil at all. Every gram of fat in it comes from the meat itself. Its calorie figure is our estimate at 83 kcal per 100g, and its added panel is the more generous of the two on manganese at 6 mg.

£1.97 a kilo, sold as a 300 g foil tray.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to between £1.90 and £2.00 a day, or roughly 966 to 1014 grams. That rests on about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). It works out at a little over three trays a day for a dog of that size. Paté like this is often served as part of a meal, not the whole of it.