Golden Eagle Hypo-allergenic Adult: Duck & Potato 26/12 Grain Free review

Both recipes settle in our Good band, the same place the typical adult dry food settles, and the reason is printed on the bag for anyone who looks. One meat meal at a minimum of 29% is a fair animal share without being generous, potato matches it gram for gram, and the carbohydrate estimate comes to 44.3% of dry matter. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both come back Average, and transparency reads Outstanding. What a general nutrition score cannot see is the purpose of the recipe. The ingredient list is kept short and single-species enough to be genuinely useful to a dog with a suspected food problem. Judged on that job, it does what it says.

Ingredients, as declared: Duck Meal (min 29%), Potato (min 29%), Sugar Beet Pulp, Duck Fat, Linseed, Brewers Yeast, Duck Liver Gravy, Yucca, Kelp, L-Carnitine, Beta-Carotene, Beta-Glucans (MOS), Inulin (FOS), Probiotics (Dfm), Vitamins and Minerals, Microhealth™, Biohealth™ and Lactohealth™.

The whole idea here is subtraction. Each recipe uses one animal and one main starch, and that animal is carried the whole way through. The first bag has duck meal, duck fat and duck liver gravy; the second has salmon meal, salmon oil and salmon liver gravy. There is no unnamed fat and no borrowed fish oil sitting in the duck recipe, which is exactly the discipline an elimination trial needs and exactly what most foods fail to manage.

Meat meal at a minimum of 29% is dried before it is weighed. Cooking does not shrink it away, so its share holds. Declared protein converts to 28.3% of dry matter and fat to 13.0%, which reads as an everyday maintenance recipe and not a performance one.

Potato at a minimum of 29% is the starch and effectively the only one. It is mostly starch by nature, with a little fibre alongside some vitamin C and potassium. Grain-free foods choose it for precisely the reason it appears here, that it introduces almost nothing a dog is likely to have met and reacted to before.

The gut side of this recipe is unusually well stocked. Sugar beet pulp supplies both soluble and insoluble fibre. MOS and FOS are prebiotics, food for the good bacteria further down the gut, and a live probiotic is declared alongside them. Brewers yeast fills in B vitamins and kelp brings iodine. Yucca is the traditional inclusion for keeping the smell of the results in check.

The list then closes with Microhealth, Biohealth and Lactohealth, three trademarked names with nothing behind them on the label. They are very likely the gut package described a moment ago wearing brand names, but the label does not say so, and a name is not a declaration. If you want to know what each one contains, the maker is the only place to ask.

Duck meal at a minimum of 29% leads, and duck fat and duck liver gravy keep every animal entry on the same bird. Linseed is the only omega 3 source here, so the fats are plant based rather than marine, which is the trade for a recipe that carries no fish at all.

Both recipes are sold in 10kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition gets through around 250 grams a day, assuming roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Weigh the first week's portions rather than eyeing them, then adjust by condition.