Feelwell's Feelwells Grain Free Adult: Beef review

The beef and the chicken land in our Excellent band, a rung clear of the Good band where an ordinary adult dry food settles. The lamb and the salmon hold that typical line, and all four finish close enough that none is the obvious pick on the analysis alone. What earns the position is consistency rather than one flourish. A named animal makes up half the recipe or more, the fresh and dried shares are spelled out, and the trace elements are declared per kilo. Carbohydrate runs from 41.4% to 48.2% of dry matter across the four, against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food. Transparency reads Outstanding on all four, and protein and processing holds Good bar the salmon and trout. Nutritional balance reads Average for two of the four and Good for the beef and the chicken, and a heading below explains why.

Ingredients, as declared: Beef 50% (Freshly prepared Angus Beef 28%, Dried Beef 19%, Beef Fat 3%), Sweet Potato (26%) Potato, Peas (7.5%), Linseed, Beet Pulp, Minerals, Omega 3 Supplement, Carrot (0.1%), FOS (96mg/kg), MOS 24mg/kg)

The headline meat is declared in parts, and that is the most useful thing on these labels. Freshly prepared meat goes into the mix wet, and most of that water leaves again in the oven. The dried portion beside it ends up carrying much of the protein you actually pour into the bowl. Printing both lets you judge a recipe honestly, with no percentage taken on trust.

Sweet potato heads the plant side of every recipe, running between 23% and 26% depending on the meat. Potato and peas sit behind it. Not one of the four lists carries grain, and every starch is named in its own right.

Beyond the meat itself, the fats come from linseed and an omega 3 supplement. Linseed is a good plant source of omega 3, and it brings useful fibre and natural antioxidants with it. A dog converts plant omega 3 into the forms its skin and coat use more slowly than it takes them ready made from fish. Judge a coat over a month, not a fortnight.

Beet pulp is the fibre of choice throughout, moderately fermentable, the sort that firms a stool without slowing everything down. The two prebiotics behind it are dosed in print at 96 mg/kg of FOS and 24 mg/kg of MOS. Both feed the gut's own bacteria, adding no new ones. A figure attached to each is a better sign than a bare mention on the back of a bag.

The declared supplement panel runs the same way across the range. Vitamins A and D3 are each dosed per kilo and vitamin E is at 95 IU. Zinc follows at 50 mg, iron at 50 mg, manganese at 35 mg and iodine at 1 mg.

Beef at 50%: 28% freshly prepared Angus beef, then 19% dried beef, then 3% beef fat. This is the only recipe here whose fat is named after the same animal as the meat. Of the four this one carries the most protein, at 29%, and the least estimated carbohydrate, at 41.4% of dry matter. A whisper of carrot at 0.1% joins it, and calcium lands at 1.09% of dry matter.

£4.44 a kilo across all four flavours. Bags come in 2kg and 13.5kg, with the 2kg also sold four to a box as 8kg and the 13.5kg available as a pair.

Take a 15kg adult in moderate condition and the standard maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). The daily bowl comes out between 230 and 235 grams depending on the recipe, or £1.02 to £1.04 a day. The label's own guide asks roughly 145 to 250 grams for a dog of 10kg to 20kg, so let the waistline arbitrate.