Essential Foods Essential Nautical Living review

Our bands put this recipe in Good, level with the typical adult dry food. Fish leads the ingredients four separate times before any plant appears, and estimated carbohydrate of 39.9% of dry matter comes in below the 46.2% typical of the shelf. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Good, while transparency reads Excellent, with the seasonal fish wording the one thing keeping it from going further.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh Scottish salmon and trout (42%), sweet potato, the season's dried fish (18%), peas, dried salmon (6%), whole eggs (3%), the season's fresh fish (3%), ESSENTIAL the OMEGA 3 OIL (3%), linseed, alfalfa, salmon gravy (2%), potato, pea fibre, vitamins, minerals, mannan oligosaccharides, fructooligosaccharides, glucosamine, MSM (methylsulfonylmethane), chondroitin, cranberry, acai, bilberry, mulberry, apple, tomato, orange, pear, carrot, spinach, cauliflower, seaweed, marigold, ginseng, decaffeinated green tea, ginger.

Fresh salmon and trout at 42% make the headline, and fresh fish of any kind is mostly water before the oven takes it out. The dried fish at 18% and dried salmon at 6% are what keep the finished kibble honest, since dried fish goes in already concentrated. Protein lands at 31.7% of dry matter with estimated carbohydrate at 39.9%, still under the 46.2% a typical adult dry food carries.

Oily fish is the reason to pick this one. Salmon and trout supply omega 3 in its long chain form, the one a dog uses directly with no converting to do. The brand's own omega oil at 3% adds more again, though the list never says what that oil is pressed from. Linseed sits behind them as the plant contribution.

The seasonal fish entries are unusual and worth understanding rather than worrying about. Buying whatever is landing keeps the fish fresh and the sourcing flexible, and the trade is that the species behind those two entries is not fixed. For most dogs that is a footnote. For a dog being tested on one fish at a time it is the whole question.

No grain appears anywhere in the recipe, with sweet potato, peas and potato doing the binding, and pea fibre added for the sake of a firmer stool. Alfalfa brings a little more fibre with it.

The dosed entries are printed properly: taurine at 1,500 mg, with zinc and iron at 50 mg, manganese at 35 mg and iodine at 0.96 mg per kilo. The trace minerals are all in chelated form. MOS and FOS are prebiotics, and the bacteria they feed live further down the gut. The joint trio is named, although no amounts appear beside it. Calcium reads 1.86% of dry matter, a generous mineral load that comes with a list this fish heavy.

£6.75 a kilo. The bags are 2.5kg and 10kg, and each comes as a multipack as well.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at around 235 grams a day on an assumption of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is £1.58 a day. The label's table asks only 153 grams for a dog that size, so treat both numbers as starting points and go by condition.