Encore Trays Paté: With Lamb & Vegetables review

These trays finish in our Excellent band. Wet food scores well with us and the middle of the wet shelf sits in that same band, so this set keeps pace with the category's midpoint. The analysis is genuinely strong, with protein at 55.6% of dry matter, fat at 30.6% and no carbohydrate we can measure. What pulls against it is everything the label declines to say: poultry as a category term, a trout share with no figure, and a vitamin and mineral line with nothing dosed. What is in the tray reads well, and the label could simply say more about it.

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry, Pork, Carrots 4%, Peas 4%, Lamb 4%, Trout, Vitamins & Minerals.

The meat share is the headline. Between the poultry, the pork, the trout and the animal in the name, the tray is overwhelmingly animal. The analysis backs that up: protein converts to 55.6% of dry matter, fat to 30.6%, and the estimated carbohydrate comes out at nothing at all. Very few wet foods read like that.

The catch is that most of the meat is not pinned to a species. Chicken, turkey, duck or goose all answer to the word poultry, and the mix can change from batch to batch while the printed words stay the same. Pork is the more interesting entry, and it is still uncommon in dog food. For a lot of dogs that makes it a genuinely novel meat, and a useful one if you are trying to find something your dog has never reacted to.

Carrots and peas at 4% each are the only plants in the tray. Carrots cook down easily and bring vitamin A along with a little soluble fibre, and whole peas add fibre and a modest amount of plant protein. At these amounts neither is filling anything out, which is why the carbohydrate reading is where it is.

The list closes with vitamins and minerals as a single phrase, no quantities anywhere, and the product page states there are no additives beyond that. There is nothing troubling in it, but a label that dosed its panel would tell you a great deal more about how the tray is balanced.

Moisture is declared at 82%, so these trays are mostly water by weight, which is exactly what wet food should be. Energy is not printed, so the figure we carry is an estimate of around 82 kcal per 100g, and at that level portions look generous next to a dry bowl.

Poultry and pork again do the heavy lifting, with lamb at 4% giving the tray its name and its flavour. Lamb is easily digested and highly palatable, so a little of it goes a long way in a paté, though a dog that must eat lamb and nothing else will not find that here.

These come as 150 g trays, and the page notes they are only sold as part of a multipack, with a 5 x 150 g paté selection listed.

We do not hold a per kilo figure for these trays, so there is no day rate to quote here. On energy alone, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would get through roughly 1027 grams a day, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate).