Feelwell's Feelwells Gourmet Wet Dog Food: Venison & Potato review

Both trays carry our Excellent band word, with the lamb a shade ahead of the venison, so the choice is still about which meat suits your dog. What lifts them is plain on the label: an animal share in the mid nineties, one plant carrier apiece, and a mineral panel printed dose by dose. Nutritional balance and transparency are Outstanding on both, and protein and processing is Outstanding on the lamb, Excellent on the venison. As a category, adult wet food scores well for us, and the typical tin is an Excellent one. A placing at this level means a genuinely well-built tray.

Ingredients, as declared: Freshly Prepared Venison 95%, Potato 4.1%, Vegetable Oil, Minerals

Freshly prepared lamb at 94%, or freshly prepared venison at 95%, is very nearly the whole of each tray. Freshly prepared means the meat went in wet rather than as a dried meal, which is what you want at the front of a wet recipe, and the share is printed rather than implied.

One plant carrier follows, and then the recipe is done. Peas at 4.1% in the lamb tray, potato at 4.1% in the venison, a vegetable oil and the mineral mix. Estimated carbohydrate lands at 6.8% of dry matter in the lamb and 9.0% in the venison, both a good way below the 15.8% the typical adult wet food carries.

Protein converts to 47.4% of dry matter in the lamb tray and 45.0% in the venison. Both are high readings for a wet food, and fat runs at 31.6% and 27.5%. The venison also shows more ash, at 15.0% of dry matter against 10.5% for the lamb, and that usually points to more mineral and bone in the meat that went into it.

The added panel is unusually detailed and every line of it is dosed. Vitamin A comes at 2670 iu/kg and vitamin D3 at 290 iu/kg. Zinc follows at 42.77mg, iron at 13.5mg, copper at 6.4mg, manganese at 3.5mg, iodine at 0.49mg and selenium at 0.018mg. Cassia gum sits on the same panel at 1g. It is a thickener used to set the texture of a wet food, and a great many trays contain something doing that job without saying so on the label.

Vegetable oil is the only entry not pinned down. It is a general term for any oil of plant origin, and on a label otherwise this precise it stands out. The inclusion is small and the job it is doing is one a named oil would do just as well.

Neither tray declares its calories or its calcium, so the energy figures here are our estimates, at 87 kcal per 100g for the lamb and 84 for the venison. These are light trays either way, which is what a moisture reading in the low eighties does to a food.

Freshly prepared venison at 95% with potato at 4.1%. No other tray here carries more meat, and venison is genuinely novel for most British dogs. It is the leaner tray, with fat at 5.5% as served and 27.5% of dry matter, and the maker lists it for adults and seniors.

£11.93 a kilo, in 150g trays sold in packs of 12 and 22.

As a guide, take a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needing around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is about 966 grams a day of the lamb tray, or £11.52, and about 994 grams of the venison, or £11.86. At 150g a tray that is between six and seven trays a day. The label's own guide for a dog of that weight runs from 800 to 1000 grams.