Eukanuba Special Care Mono-Protein Lamb Adult All Breed review

Set against the adult dry shelf, whose midpoint falls in the very same place, this recipe settles in our Good band. Protein and processing reads Good, while transparency climbs well clear of it to Outstanding. That is fair for a label that names its single animal in three separate places and leaves nothing to a category word. The maker does not print moisture, so we assume the standard 8%, and the dry matter figures carry that assumption.

Ingredients, as declared: freshly frozen lamb (24%), lamb meal (19%), whole peas, pea starch, potato, sweet potato (10%), dried beet pulp (3%), lamb gravy (2%), linseed, minerals, fructooligosaccharides (0.26%, a natural prebiotic), mannanoligosaccharides (0.15%, a natural prebiotic).

At 24%, freshly frozen lamb is the largest fresh share in the Special Care mono-protein group. Most of that is water, and the bulk of it leaves during cooking. The 19% lamb meal behind it is the entry that survives intact into the bowl, and having both printed is what lets a reader work out what is really in the kibble. Protein converts to 25.5% of dry matter with fat at 13.0%.

Whole peas and pea starch come before the potato here, with sweet potato at 10% behind them. No cereal appears in the recipe at all. Whole peas are the better version of the ingredient, carrying fibre and micronutrients that refined pea flour would have left behind. Carbohydrate works out at an estimated 49.3% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. Behind the meat, the plant side is doing steady work.

What makes the Special Care idea worth attention is that nothing quietly breaks it. Lamb appears as the fresh meat, as the meal and as the gravy, and no second animal turns up as an unnamed fat, a hydrolysed flavouring or a splash of fish oil. That is precisely the sort of list an exclusion trial needs, and precisely the sort most single-protein foods fail to deliver once you read past the front of the bag.

Crude ash reads 9.0% of dry matter and calcium 1.85%, both on the generous side, which is what a red meat meal brings with it in bone and minerals. For an adult dog in normal health that is comfortable enough, and the recipe is labelled for adults only. It is simply a figure to know if a growing large breed will ever be eating from the same bag.

Linseed is the omega source. The small print is more generous than the plain front label suggests: taurine at 500 mg, L-carnitine at 50 mg, vitamin E at 250 mg and beta carotene at 5 mg per kilo. The trace minerals are supplied as amino acid chelates, a form generally absorbed well, and each one is dosed, from zinc at 62.5 mg down to iodine at 1.5 mg per kilo. Beet pulp at 3% provides the fibre, with two declared prebiotics closing the list, fructooligosaccharides at 0.26% and mannanoligosaccharides at 0.15%.

Two bag sizes are listed, with 12kg the larger.

On quantity, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes out at roughly 245 grams a day, working from about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Eukanuba's own guide is 250 to 290 grams for a 20kg dog, and between the two the waistline is the better judge.