Gelert Working Dog Tripe Mix review

Our Average band is where this tin finishes, a good way under the Excellent mark a typical adult wet food reaches, and nearly all of that distance comes from what the label leaves out. Protein and processing and transparency both read Average, because a single named ingredient at 19% is all a reader has to go on. Nutritional balance reads Outstanding, which tells you the analysis itself is not the trouble: 50.0% protein and 37.5% fat on a dry matter basis is a rich, meaty profile that many tins do not reach. None of this is a safety judgement, and tins built like this have kept working dogs fit for decades. It is a score about disclosure, and this label discloses very little.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat & Animal Derivatives (Tripe 19%), Derivatives of Vegetable Origin and Minerals.

A ruminant's stomach, most often a cow's, is where tripe comes from, and it earns its place here honestly. It is nutrient dense and easy to digest, and about as palatable as dog food gets. Named at 19%, it is the single point on this label you can hold on to.

The rest of the animal content falls under meat and animal derivatives, the legal term for the fleshy parts and by-products of warm-blooded land animals. Material at the very good end and material at the very ordinary end both fit under it, and the label offers no way of knowing which this tin holds. Derivatives of vegetable origin is just as broad on the plant side, covering anything from cereals to legumes to oil seed. Both terms let the mix move between batches while the printed composition stays exactly the same.

The declared analysis is where this tin argues its case. Protein converts to 50.0% of dry matter and fat to 37.5%, a combination that suits a dog burning real energy, with ash at a modest 10.0%. Add those to the fibre and the declared 80.0% moisture and there is nothing left over for carbohydrate at all, which is why our estimate reads 0.0%. In practice that means the figures on the label have been rounded, not that starch is entirely absent. Treat it as a sign the tin is meat-led, not as a measurement.

There is no separate additives panel to look at. Minerals appear as one word in the composition, so a supplement has clearly gone in, but which vitamins and trace elements it covers is not stated.

£2.27 a kilo, sold in 400g tins, twelve to a case.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat around 850 grams a day, coming to roughly £1.93. That assumes a daily energy need near 840 kcal, the figure the usual 110 × bodyweight^0.75 maintenance sum gives for a dog of that weight.