Gelert Country Choice Grain Free Adult: Lamb review

Both varieties come out in our Good band, level with the middle of the adult dry market. Two things do most of that work. The meat is already dried when it goes into the mixer, so the declared share survives the oven rather than evaporating in it, and the carbohydrate load finishes under the typical for a dry food. The pillars are honest about the rest, protein and processing reading Good, nutritional balance Average and transparency a good way above them at Outstanding.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb (42%) (Lamb Meal Meal, Lamb Digest), Sweet Potato (28%), Potato (8%), Rapeseed Oil (4%), Pea Starch (4%), Linseed, Beet Pulp, Lucerne, Yeast, Carrot, Minerals, Tomato Powder, Seaweed Meal, Glucosamine (125 mg/kg), Chondroitin (50 mg/kg), Herbs (0.1%), Yucca (200 mg/kg), Cranberry (100 mg/kg), Marigold.

Both recipes lead with meat meal and digest rather than fresh meat, and that is worth understanding before you compare percentages anywhere else. Most of the weight of fresh meat is water, and cooking takes it away. A meal has already been dried and ground, so 42% of lamb or 37% of turkey here is near enough what the finished kibble holds. The same percentage on a fresh meat label would not be. Protein lands at 27.5% and 29.7% of dry matter respectively.

On the starch side it is sweet potato that does most of the work, with potato and pea starch behind it and no grain anywhere. Carbohydrate works out at 45.6% of dry matter for the lamb, 43.4% for the turkey. Both sit under the 46.2% typical for adult dry food, a tidy result for a kibble built this way.

Rapeseed oil is the only added fat, and it is named outright, not tucked under an oils and fats heading. Linseed sits behind it, bringing omega 3 in the plant form. No fish appears in either bag, which means a dog kept away from fish can eat right across the range.

What follows is a short, sensible list. Fibre comes from beet pulp and lucerne, seaweed meal carries iodine along with a range of trace minerals, and yucca at 200 mg/kg with cranberry at 100 mg/kg finish the list. Tomato powder, carrot and marigold are seasoning more than substance, and nothing in the recipe depends on them.

Ash comes in at 12.1% of dry matter, higher than a fresh meat recipe would run, and that is the bone and mineral fraction that arrives with a dried meat. The minerals themselves are declared as one inline word with no dosed panel, so there are no zinc or copper amounts to read. The joint pair does carry printed doses, and not many labels at this level bother with that.

Lamb at 42%, as lamb meal and lamb digest, sitting in front of sweet potato at 28% and potato at 8%. Of the two it carries the larger meat share and the lower protein figure, at 25.0% as fed or 27.5% of dry matter. For a dog that has come off poultry, this is the obvious one to try.

The lamb is £3.25 a kilo and the turkey £4.24, both sold in a 12kg bag.

For a 15kg adult in moderate condition the guide is about 258 grams a day, taking maintenance at roughly 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard estimate). That puts the lamb at £0.84 a day and the turkey at £1.09.