Forthglade Cold Pressed Grain Free: Salmon with Sweet Potato review

Every recipe in this range lands in our Good band, and so does the typical cold-pressed food, so Forthglade is keeping exactly the company it should. Within that band these five sit in the upper half, short of the ceiling. The reason repeats across all of them: the named animal comes in at just under a third of the recipe, and sweet potato and peas together take more of the bowl than the meat. Transparency reads Outstanding on every recipe, nutritional balance Average, and protein and processing and value both Good. The five finish close enough together that the animal on the front of the bag should decide it.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon (29.5%) (16% Freshly Prepared Salmon, 13.5% Dried Ground Salmon)*†, Dried Sweet Potato (29.5%)*†, Dried Peas*†, Gelatine*, Dried Beet Pulp (3%)*†, Dried Fruit (2.3%: Apples, Pears, Blueberries, Cranberries)*, Brewer's Yeast*†, Sunflower Oil (1.5%)*, Salmon Oil (1%)*†, Dried Botanicals (0.6%: Fennel, Nettle, Dandelion)*, Mannan-oligosaccharide (0.5%)*, Egg Powder*†, Chicory Extract (0.2%)*†, Dried Seaweed*, Camomile (0.2%)*, Flaxseed Oil (0.1%)*, Glucosamine (300mg/kg), Chondroitin Sulphate (300mg/kg), Yucca Extract (0.02%)*. *Natural Ingredient, † ingredients thermally pre-treated prior to cold pressing.

The meat is declared twice over on every label, split between freshly prepared and dried ground forms, with the total printed. Chicken, duck, turkey and lamb each come in at 32.5%, with salmon a little behind at 29.5%. Its water has already gone, so dried meat holds far more protein per gram than the fresh kind. A split declaration like this tells you considerably more than a single headline figure would.

Forthglade marks which ingredients were thermally pre-treated before pressing, and that is worth pausing on. Cold pressing is a low temperature forming step, not a promise that nothing in the bag has ever met heat, and most brands leave that unsaid. Here the meat, sweet potato, peas and beet pulp carry the mark on most recipes, so you can see precisely what the method does and does not cover.

The carbohydrate work goes to sweet potato and dried peas, the sweet potato running from 26% to 29.5% by recipe and the peas sitting behind it. Carbohydrate converts to between 43.1% and 52.2% of dry matter across the five, which straddles the 43.2% typical for cold-pressed food, the lamb sitting lowest and the salmon highest. In moderation peas are a decent whole ingredient that brings fibre and a spread of vitamins. Here they are earning their place as a starch source.

The fat sources differ recipe by recipe and repay a look. Chicken and duck use poultry fat, a category term that does not say which bird; turkey uses chicken fat, named outright; lamb uses coconut and sunflower oil; and salmon uses sunflower oil. Salmon oil at 1% appears everywhere, with flaxseed oil or linseed on most lists, so the omega 3 side is covered throughout the range.

The tail is generous and mostly earns its keep. Dried fruit at 2.3% brings apples, pears, blueberries and cranberries, the last of which has a long-standing reputation for urinary tract support. Mannan-oligosaccharide and chicory extract are the two prebiotics, and they feed the gut's own bacteria. Seaweed supplies iodine, and the botanicals at 0.6% are fennel, nettle and dandelion. Yucca extract at 0.02% is in there for stool odour.

Glucosamine and chondroitin are both printed at 300mg/kg, which is a proper declaration rather than a name on a list. Gelatin, high up on every recipe, is a collagen protein from the same broad family and does structural work in the pellet as well. Whether joint supplements deliver everything owners hope for is still argued over, but a printed figure at least lets you compare one bag against another.

Salmon at 29.5%, split as 16% freshly prepared and 13.5% dried ground, with sweet potato matching it at 29.5%. It is the leanest of the five, fat converting to 8.7% of dry matter, and the highest in carbohydrate at 52.2%. At an estimated 329 kcal per 100g it is also the lightest, so portions run a little larger than on the meat recipes.

The chicken and turkey recipes are £6.00 a kilo, and the duck, lamb and salmon are £7.00. Bags run from 2kg up to 18kg across the range, with 10kg and 20kg sizes offered on the chicken and turkey.

Take a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition at about 840 kcal a day, the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. A day's feeding runs from £1.45 on the chicken and turkey to £1.79 on the salmon, with the duck at £1.70 and the lamb at £1.77.