Gentle Tinned: Pheasant with Carrots review

Every one of these four tins reaches our Excellent band, the goat included. Holding that line is worth more than it looks. We mark wet food highly, and the everyday adult tin already reaches Excellent, so this range is competing at the top of a strong category. Protein and processing reads Outstanding on the duck and the goat and Excellent on the pheasant and the venison, with transparency Outstanding across all four on the strength of the parts breakdown. The goat gets there on the lightest meat share of the range.

Ingredients, as declared: Pheasant Meat (84%) (consisting of : 60% muscle meat, 17% stomachs, 16% hearts, 7% necks/wing bones), Fresh Carrots (9%), Buckwheat (2%), Amaranth (2%), Prunes (2%), Added vitamins and minerals (1%)

The headline share is high and, unusually, it is itemised. Venison meat at 93% is broken into 64.5% muscle meat, 26% lungs and 9.5% necks. Pheasant at 84% is 60% muscle meat with 17% stomachs, 16% hearts and 7% necks and wing bones. Duck at 80% is 60% muscle meat with 19% stomachs, 12.5% hearts and 8.5% necks. Goat at 50% carries muscle meat, lungs, hearts, rumens and a little liver. Very few labels open the animal share up like this, and being able to see the split is what separates a genuine whole-animal recipe from a headline number.

Organ meat is the reason those percentages hold up nutritionally. Liver, heart and lungs are dense in the minerals and B vitamins that muscle meat alone is thinner in, and stomachs and rumens bring the same benefits that make tripe such an old favourite. Protein converts to between 39.6% and 46.2% of dry matter across the four tins and fat to between 23.8% and 30.0%, so these are meat-led analyses and not meat-led marketing.

The plant side is short and named. Fresh carrots run through three of the tins, at 22% in the goat, 14% in the duck and 9% in the pheasant, with fresh potatoes at 25% giving the goat tin its body. Fruit appears as pears, prunes or cranberries at small percentages. Millet at 3% in the duck tin is the only true cereal in the range. Buckwheat and amaranth in the pheasant and venison recipes are seeds and not grains, which is why those two are sold as grain free.

Carbohydrate converts to between 15.6% and 22.9% of dry matter depending on the tin, against the 15.8% typical for adult wet food. That figure is reached by subtraction rather than by measurement, so it should be taken as an indication, and on the goat tin in particular the potato share is doing real work.

The added panel is identical on all four labels and every entry is dosed. Vitamin D3 comes at 250IU and vitamin E at 40mg per kilo, with zinc at 22mg, manganese at 2mg, copper at 0.5mg and potassium iodide at 0.5mg. There is no added vitamin A, which a recipe this rich in liver and other organ meat can reasonably carry in the ingredients themselves.

Pheasant meat at 84%, broken down as 60% muscle meat, 17% stomachs, 16% hearts and 7% necks and wing bones, with fresh carrots at 9%. Buckwheat, amaranth and prunes each sit at 2%, and the first two are seeds rather than cereal grains. Energy is estimated at 104 kcal per 100g.

£8.12 a kilo. The tins are 400g, sold singly and in packs of 6.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat between 710 and 1235 grams a day depending on the tin, or between £5.77 and £10.03. It assumes the standard maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal a day, calculated as 110 × bodyweight^0.75.

The spread between those figures is unusually wide because the goat tin is so much lighter than the venison. Gentle's own guide for a dog between 10 and 15kg runs from 600 to 990 grams a day depending on the recipe.