Farm Food HE Sheep review

This one settles in our Good band, where the middle of the cold-pressed field sits too. Naming the mutton and printing its percentage genuinely helps, and it is part of why transparency reads Outstanding here and protein and processing Good. The arithmetic still puts cereal ahead of meat, with carbohydrate at half the dry matter. Read it as a modest food that is unusually open about what it contains, rather than as a food our scoring has misjudged.

Ingredients, as declared: Released corn, hemoglobin powder, released wheat, released rice, mutton meat meal (11%), beef fat, whey powder, brewer's yeast, vegetable fibers, cold pressed sunflower oil, minerals, lecithin, cold pressed linseed oil, inulin, vitamins and trace elements.

Mutton meat meal at 11% is the entry that sets this recipe apart from its stablemates. Meat meal is the dried, ground form of the parts of an animal that do not go to the human table. That means residual meat and offal, plus connective tissue. It is a concentrated protein, and there is nothing poor about it as a source. What matters here is the word mutton in front of it, because the same ingredient appears anonymously elsewhere in the brand's pressed line.

The single-protein question deserves an honest answer. Only one meat species is spelled out on the label, but that is not the whole story. Beef fat is on the list and whey powder brings a milk protein, while the hemoglobin powder in second place names no animal at all. This recipe will not carry a strict elimination diet.

Released corn, wheat and rice carry the bulk. The released treatment opens the starch before the pellet is pressed, which is what allows a cold-pressed food to lean on cereal and still digest properly. Wheat matters to the small share of dogs that react to it. Here it is spelled out on its own, not tucked inside a cereals catch-all.

There is brewer's yeast here too, quietly bringing natural B vitamins and every essential amino acid. Inulin feeds the gut's own bacteria. Lecithin and vegetable fibres handle the structure of the pellet. The two finishing oils are cold pressed and named, sunflower for vitamin E and linseed for omega 3 fats.

Carbohydrate is estimated at 50.0% of dry matter, above the 43.2% typical of cold-pressed food, and energy at 414 kcal per 100g runs well ahead of the usual 351. Protein converts to 26.1% of dry matter and fat to 15.2%. Calcium sits at 1.09% of dry matter, a level that suits a growing large breed.

The fortification is published in full, which is rare at any level. Every dose is printed: vitamins A, D3, E and K3, the complete B group, vitamin C, choline, biotin and L-carnitine at 50 mg. That last one is an amino acid that helps turn fat into usable energy. Manganese, copper and zinc turn up twice each, as a sulphate in one place and an amino acid chelate in another. The selenium is a yeast-derived form.

This one is bagged at 2kg, 4kg, 12kg and 15kg, and the mini chunk for smaller mouths comes in 2kg and 4kg.

For a sense of the portion, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs around 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), which this pellet supplies in roughly 203 grams. Farm Food's chart gives 340 to 510 grams a day for a dog between 20 and 30kg.