Exe Valley Adult Dry Feed: Luscious Lamb review

All five flavours finish in our Good band, and none of them is more than a place or two from the others, so this is a range pulling firmly in one direction. The typical adult dry food sits in that band too. The lift comes from the meat, declared at 50% or better with the fresh and dried shares broken out, and from a base with no cereal in it. What stops them climbing higher is a carbohydrate load sitting at about the usual level for a dry food and a protein figure of 24% that is steady rather than striking.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb 50% (including 30% Freshly Prepared Lamb, 18% Dried Lamb 2% Lamb Stock), Sweet Potato (23%), Peas, Potato (6%), Beet Pulp, Linseed, Omega 3 Supplement (1%), Vitamins & Minerals, Vegetable Stock, Mint (equivalent to 7.5g per Kg of product), FOS (92 mg/kg), MOS (23 mg/kg).

Each recipe declares either 50% or 55% meat and then does the decent thing of breaking that figure into three. Take the chicken: 31% freshly prepared, 21% dried and 3% stock. Watch the dried number. Most of the weight in freshly prepared meat is water, and the oven takes much of it back, while dried meat is already there. Across the five, protein settles at 24% as fed, 26.4% of dry matter.

Sweet potato runs between 23% and 26% by flavour, with peas next and potato between 5% and 8%. Nothing cereal based appears anywhere, and estimated carbohydrate converts to between 45.0% and 47.2% of dry matter, which is around the 46.2% adult dry foods typically run at.

Linseed and an entry called omega 3 supplement at 1% handle the omega 3 side. Linseed is a good plant source, though the form it delivers takes a dog's body longer to turn into the versions skin and coat use. Give a coat weeks, not days, to answer. No source at all is given for the supplement. Marine oils are the usual pick for that job, and the fish free question stays open across all five.

Beet pulp does the fibre work, with fructooligosaccharides at 92 mg/kg and mannanoligosaccharides at 23 mg/kg dosed in print behind it. Both are prebiotics, food for the gut's own bacteria rather than anything the dog digests directly, and seeing the doses on the bag is a good sign on any label.

Every bag carries the same trace mineral panel, printed in full: iron at 160mg, zinc at 130mg, manganese at 110mg, copper at 60mg, iodine at 1.58mg and selenium at 0.60mg per kilo. Calcium is the one figure these labels leave out, which matters far less on an adult only food than it would on a bag written for growth.

Lamb at 50%, split as 30% freshly prepared, 18% dried and 2% lamb stock, over the smallest sweet potato share here at 23%. Ash comes in a little above its siblings at 8.4%, 9.2% of dry matter, which is what a red meat with bone in its dried portion tends to do. Mint at 7.5g per kilo of product is the finishing note.

Per kilo, the chicken, the salmon and trout and the turkey are £5.00, with the duck and the lamb at £5.20. Every flavour comes in a 1.8kg or a 10kg bag, with a sample pack alongside them.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats around 242 to 244 grams a day of these recipes, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £1.21 a day on the chicken, £1.22 on the salmon and trout and on the turkey, and £1.27 on the duck and the lamb.