Eukanuba Special Care Mono-Protein Salmon Adult All Breed review

Adult dry food as a category has its midpoint in our Good band. This one reads level with that midpoint, in the Good band, and a reader can check every reason on the label. One species is named the whole way down, the mineral panel is chelated and dosed in print, and the added fat is named as sunflower oil. The transparency pillar comes out Outstanding. No moisture figure is declared, so we work from the standard 8% and the dry matter conversions rest on that.

Ingredients, as declared: freshly frozen salmon (19%), salmon meal (19%), potato, whole peas, sweet potato (13%), pea starch, sunflower oil, dried beet pulp (3%), salmon gravy (2%), minerals, fructooligosaccharides (0.25%, a natural prebiotic), mannanoligosaccharides (0.15%, a natural prebiotic).

Salmon arrives twice, freshly frozen at 19% and as salmon meal at another 19%. Before cooking, the fresh entry is largely water. That leaves the meal to carry most of the finished kibble, and printing both is what allows a reader to tell. Protein converts to 26.1% of dry matter and fat to 13.0%.

Potato leads the plant side with whole peas behind it, sweet potato at 13% and then pea starch, and nothing on that list is a grain. Carbohydrate is estimated at 50.6% of dry matter, above the 46.2% that is typical of adult dry food. That is the usual trade a grain-free kibble makes when potato and legumes take the place of cereal.

The single-species claim here is watertight. There is no poultry fat, no unnamed animal fat, no hydrolysed liver and no meat derivative hiding in the tail of the list. The added fat is sunflower oil, a plant oil that is well regarded and brings vitamin E of its own. For a dog being taken off land meats under a vet's eye, that clean list matters more than any headline percentage.

The omega 3s come from the salmon itself, with no separate oil needed. Marine omega 3 is the form a dog's body uses directly, and that is why fish recipes tend to show up first in the coat. Unlike the duck and lamb recipes in this range, there is no linseed here, so the fish is carrying that job alone.

The fibre here is dried beet pulp at 3%. Two prebiotics are declared, fructooligosaccharides at 0.25% and mannanoligosaccharides at 0.15%, the second of them derived from yeast cell walls. Both target the large intestine and the bacteria living there. The trace minerals are amino acid chelates, and each is dosed on the label: 62.5 mg zinc, 50 mg iron, 10 mg manganese, 5 mg copper and 1.5 mg iodine per kilo. Taurine at 500 mg and L-carnitine at 50 mg sit alongside them.

£4.54 a kilo, in two bag sizes with 12kg the larger.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at about 241 grams a day, or £1.09, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own table asks 245 to 285 grams for a 20kg dog.