Edgard & Cooper Senior Tins review

This tin holds our Excellent band. Wet food does well on our scoring generally and the middle of the wet shelf reads Excellent as well, so an older dog's owner should read this as a recipe sitting comfortably among its peers. Naming and meat share carry it: chicken and salmon are 60% of the tin with a percentage on each, and no animal content hides behind a category term. Nutritional balance and transparency both land on Outstanding, and protein and processing and value sit alongside at Excellent.

Ingredients, as declared: chicken 50%, ASC* salmon 10%, potato 4%, peas 2%, broccoli (dried) 0.5%, minerals, mannan-oligosaccharides (MOS), linseed, salmon oil, fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS), spinach (dried) 0.06%, blueberries (dried) 0.05%, cranberries (dried) 0.05%, glucosamine, chondroitin sulphate, dried fennel 0.01%, dried caraway 0.01%, dried yarrow 0.01%, dried blackberry leaves 0.01%, dried mistle 0.01%, dried chamomile blossoms 0.01%, dried gentianroot 0.01%, dried centaury 0.01%. *ASC certified as responsibly farmed. www.asc-aqua.org

The animal side is chicken at 50% with salmon at 10%, and that salmon carries an ASC certification for responsible farming. Protein converts to 45.5% of dry matter and fat to 22.7%, a leaner balance than most meat-led wet food manages and a sensible one for a dog whose walks have got shorter.

Potato at 4% and peas at 2% are the substantial plants, with dried broccoli, spinach, blueberries and cranberries below them in fractions of a per cent. Neither potato nor peas is a cereal, so the recipe stays grain free, though between them they lift the estimated carbohydrate to 19.1% of dry matter.

Glucosamine and chondroitin close the working list with no figures beside them. Both are sensible additions to an older dog's dinner and both are worth having in the bowl. If a vet is already treating your dog's joints, keep that treatment running and let this be the meal underneath it.

MOS and FOS make the prebiotic pair. Their job is the bacteria in the large intestine, not the dog. The omega-3 comes from linseed and salmon oil. A herbal tail of fennel, caraway, yarrow, chamomile and the rest runs at 0.01% apiece, which is character more than nutrition.

The additive panel is short and dosed throughout: vitamin E at 30 mg, zinc at 20 mg, copper at 2.3 mg, manganese at 2 mg and iodine at 0.5 mg. Much of the micronutrition in a tin this meat-heavy comes from the meat itself, which is how a list this short can still add up.

£7.33 a kilo. The tin is 400 g and comes singly or in sixes.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to around £6.35 a day, or roughly 866 grams, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own guide for a dog that size is 750 grams a day.