Forthglade Grain Free Complete Wet Adult: Sardines & Sweet Potato review

Eight of the nine hold our Excellent band and the Beef and Sweet Potato steps up into Outstanding, with very little between them. That result is earned, because wet food rates strongly with us and the everyday adult wet tray already reaches our Excellent band. A range has to keep its standards up simply to stay level with the shelf around it. What lifts this one clear is uncomplicated: one named animal doing three quarters of the work, named plants behind it, and not a single category term anywhere on the label. Transparency reads Outstanding on every tray, and protein and processing reads Excellent throughout apart from the Beef and Sweet Potato and the Duck and Potato, which read Outstanding.

Ingredients, as declared: Sardines (75%)*, Sweet Potato (4%)*, Carrots (2%)*, Peas (2%)*, Minerals, Dried Seaweed*, Dried Herbs (Parsley, Rosemary, Nettle, Camomile) (0.12%)*, Chicory Root Extract (0.05%)*, Glucosamine (50mg/kg), Chondroitin (50mg/kg), Yucca Extract (0.005%)*. *natural ingredient

Every recipe opens the same way, with one animal at 75% of the tray, named on the front and named again with a percentage in the list. The Chicken and Liver tray splits that between chicken at 70% and chicken liver at 5%, the same bird twice over. Protein converts to between 35.0% and 44.5% of dry matter across the range, a genuinely meat-forward analysis for wet food.

The starch is deliberately modest and always named. Sweet potato, potato flakes or butternut squash sits at 4%, with carrots and peas at 2% each on most trays. Even so, carbohydrate converts to between 19.0% and 25.0% of dry matter on our estimate, above the 15.8% typical for adult wet food. That estimate is arrived at by difference rather than measurement, so it picks up whatever the printed analysis does not account for. On a recipe with this little declared plant matter it will read on the generous side.

The finishing entries do real work for their size. Linseed oil at 0.5% supplies plant omega-3, and dried seaweed at 0.45% brings iodine with a broad sweep of trace minerals. Chicory root extract is in for its inulin, and inulin feeds the good bacteria down in the large intestine. Yucca extract closes most lists at 0.005%.

Glucosamine and chondroitin sit at 50mg/kg each on most of the trays. That is a supportive level. A dog with diagnosed joint disease should keep whatever their vet has prescribed and treat this as the dinner underneath it.

The added panel is the same on every label and every entry is dosed. Vitamin A at 2,500IU, vitamin D3 at 200IU and vitamin E at 30mg per kilo lead, then zinc at 50mg, iron at 10mg, copper at 5mg and iodine at 0.5mg. The trace elements come as glycine and amino acid chelates, a more absorbable form than the plain sulphates many labels use.

Sardines at 75% with sweet potato at 4%, the gentler of the two fish trays, with fat at 28.6% of dry matter and 72.0% declared moisture. Our energy estimate is 123 kcal per 100g.

£4.56 a kilo, with trays sold in packs of 18 and 36, and the Duck with Pear and Vegetables in a pack of 12.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition gets through between 604 and 884 grams a day, depending on the tray, at between £2.76 and £4.03. Working from the standard maintenance formula, 110 × bodyweight^0.75, a dog that size needs in the region of 840 kcal daily.

The tray guide printed for a dog between 10 and 25kg is 395 grams a day, which lands under the energy-based figure. Take both as starting points and let your dog's condition decide.