Gentle Goat review

This one finishes in our Good band, the same rung the typical cold-pressed food occupies. What keeps it from climbing is not hard to find. With goat at 18%, the plant side of the recipe does a good deal of the lifting, and nutritional balance reads Average. Where it holds its ground is openness: percentages on the leading entries, the vegetable group named out in full, and a printed dose for every vitamin and mineral. Transparency reads Outstanding on the strength of it. If a novel protein is what brought you here, the band word matters far less than the goat does, because very few foods of any format offer it.

Ingredients, as declared: Goat Meat (dried and ground)(18%), Vegetables (peas, beetroot, parsnip, beta vulgaris)(18%), Potato flakes (17%), Rice Germ, Herbs (dried and ground), Linseed, Sea algae, Sea fish oil, Milk Thistle seeds, Hemp oil, Gelatine, Fennel seeds, Blueberries (dried and ground), Egg yolk powder, Green lipped mussel meat extract, Bentonite and Bentonite-Montmorillonite, Yucca Schidigera (dried and ground)

Goat is the headline and the point. Almost no commercial diet uses this lean red meat. That is what makes it useful to a dog whose immune system has learned to object to the usual suspects. At 18% dried and ground, this is a real inclusion and not a flavour note, though the leading cold-pressed recipes give their meat a bigger share.

The vegetable group at 18% is named rather than left vague, covering peas, beetroot, parsnip and beta vulgaris. That is worth something, because a bare vegetables entry can mean almost anything and can change between batches. Potato flakes at 17% and rice germ carry most of the starch, with carbohydrate converting to 50.0% of dry matter against a 43.2% middle for the category.

Rice germ is a curious choice and a good one. The germ is the tiny part of the grain that would have grown into a new plant, and it holds a disproportionate share of the rice grain's B vitamins, thiamine in particular. It does mean the food carries a cereal, so a grain-free household needs to know it is there.

The fat and the extras are where this label gets interesting. Linseed and hemp oil bring plant omega fats, sea fish oil brings the marine kind, and behind them sit milk thistle seeds and fennel seeds, with bentonite clay and yucca schidigera at the end. Green lipped mussel extract is the joint ingredient. It carries no dose and sits well down the list, so read it as a helpful addition and not a supplement in its own right.

The analysis reads sensibly for a food of this type, with protein converting to 27.0% of dry matter, fat to 11.3% and calcium to 1.33%, which suits growing dogs as well as adults. Every vitamin and mineral is printed with a figure, and the trace minerals come in chelated forms. Moisture is declared rather than assumed, so the dry matter column here is built on the label's own numbers.

£6.14 a kilo. It is bagged at 5kg and 14kg, the larger bag can be bought singly or in twos, and there is a bundle that pairs it with the Gentle Fish bag.

On the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs roughly 840 kcal a day, which comes to about 250 grams of this food, or £1.53 a day. For reference, Gentle's adult chart puts a 10kg dog on 120 grams a day.