Eden Gourmet Wet: Duck & Herring review

All three recipes hold our Excellent band, and there is very little between them, with the duck and the pheasant recipes reading a shade stronger than the turkey one. A typical adult wet food already earns an Excellent band place of its own, so the interesting part is not where these land but how they get there. The meat share is high enough that the rest of the label runs to barely half a dozen entries, and nothing on it is doing filler duty. Nutritional balance and transparency read Outstanding right across the three, with protein and processing Good throughout and value Excellent.

Ingredients, as declared: Duck (35%), Herring (35%), Minerals (1%), MOS (0.1%), FOS (0.1%). Turmeric (0.1%), Green-Lipped Mussel (0.1 %).

The meat is the whole story here. Duck and herring take 35% each on one recipe. Pheasant and salmon do the same on another, and the third opens with turkey at 40% before goose and rabbit at 15% each. Protein converts to between 40.8% and 49.5% of dry matter, and fat to between 25.7% and 35.4%, so these are rich recipes as well as meaty ones.

After the meat and 1% minerals, the list is four supplements at 0.1% and nothing else. Carbohydrate converts to an estimated 8.2% to 8.8% of dry matter where the typical adult wet food runs at 15.8%. Working the estimate out by subtraction tends to run high on wet food, so the real figure is likely lower still. Very few wet recipes are built this bare.

MOS and FOS are the prebiotic pair, one drawn from yeast cell walls and the other from plants such as chicory. Both are there to encourage the good bacteria that live further down the gut. Turmeric is the botanical flourish and sits at trace level. None of the three is the reason to buy the food, but they are sensible things to find at the end of a list.

Green-lipped mussel closes each recipe as the source of glucosamine and chondroitin. There is no dose printed beside it, so treat it as a welcome extra and not a joint regime. A dog already on a vet dosed supplement stays on that, with this as the dinner underneath. The mussel is also why fish belongs on the turkey label as well as the two fish ones.

The added panel is dosed but not identical between recipes. Two labels print vitamin A at 3000 IU while the third prints vitamin D3 at 200 IU. All three carry vitamin E at 20 mg, zinc at 25 mg, manganese at 1.4 mg and iodine at 0.75 mg. Copper sits at 1.5 mg on the duck recipe and 2.5 mg on the pheasant. In a recipe this meat rich the ingredients themselves carry much of the micronutrition. That is how a panel this short can still do the job.

Duck at 35% with herring at 35%, an even split between a rich bird and an oily fish. Nutritional balance reads Outstanding here, as it does right through the range, with protein at 45.5% of dry matter and 105 kcal per 100g. Its vitamin line leads with vitamin A at 3000 IU and its copper sits at 1.5 mg.

£8.75 a kilo across all three recipes. One size only, 400 g. It is sold alone and in packs of 6 and 36.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition takes roughly 706 to 884 grams a day, which comes to between £6.18 and £7.74 depending on the recipe. Behind that sits about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own guide for a 15 kg dog is 554 grams a day.