Growling Tums Gourmet Adult: Haddock & Parsley review

Eight of the nine recipes finish in our Good band, level with the typical adult dry food, and the chicken climbs a step past them into Excellent. They sit close enough together that the real choice is which animal suits your dog. Which recipe edges ahead by a point matters far less. Transparency reads Outstanding throughout and protein and processing Good on all but the two fish recipes, earned by named species, printed percentages and lists short enough to take in at a glance. Beef and chicken read Good for nutritional balance and the rest read Average. The salmon and trout is one of the rest, and it carries the least fat and the most starch of the nine.

Ingredients, as declared: Fish 50% (Including 26% Freshly Prepared Haddock, 17.5% Dried Salmon, 4.5% Trout Oil & 2% Salmon Stock), Sweet Potato (24%), Peas, Potato, Beet Pulp, Olive Oil, Linseed, Sunflower Oil, Minerals, Vitamins, Parsley (equivalent to 25g per Kg of product), Vegetable Stock, FOS (92 mg/kg), MOS (23 mg/kg).

The headline animal share is declared at 50% or more on every recipe, and each label breaks it into fresh and dried. That split is the part worth reading. Most of a fresh meat's weight is water that the oven drives off. The dried portion runs between 12% and 21% across the range, and its contribution to the finished kibble outweighs where it sits on the list. Protein lands between 27.2% and 31.5% of dry matter, which is a genuinely meaty result for a dry food.

Every recipe puts sweet potato at the head of the plant side, declared between 21.5% and 27%, with peas and potato behind it. No wheat, rice, maize or barley appears anywhere in the range. Carbohydrate converts to between 41.4% and 51.5% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. The meatier recipes here are meaningfully meatier, and the leaner ones sit about where the category does.

Linseed turns up on every list as the plant omega 3 source, and on all but the haddock recipe it is joined by an omega 3 supplement that the labels never trace to a species. The haddock takes a different route, leaning on olive oil and sunflower oil instead. Beet pulp handles the fibre, with its sugar taken out during processing. What remains is soluble and insoluble fibre together, and that helps keep digestion even.

FOS and MOS close out every recipe with a dose printed against each. Both are prebiotics. They are not really feeding the dog at all: their target is the friendly bacteria that live low in the large intestine, and a lot of a dog's daily comfort is settled down there.

The garnishes change with the animal, from carrot and cranberry to mint, apple, blackberry and mulberry, and each is declared at a level that tells you plainly it is a flourish. No recipe is better for a trace of mulberry, and none of these needs to be, because the weight of the argument sits in the meat share.

Fish at 50%, though not one fish: 26% freshly prepared haddock, then dried salmon at 17.5%, salmon stock at 2% and trout oil at 4.5%. On the fat side the linseed is joined by olive oil and sunflower oil, and parsley comes in at 25g per kilo of food. Three species in one bag makes this a poor fit for an elimination trial and a very good one for a dog that simply loves fish.

Per kilo the turkey is £4.08 and the venison £5.42. The chicken, pork and salmon and trout are £4.92, the lamb £5.08, the rabbit £5.25, and the beef and haddock £5.33. Most recipes come in 4kg, 6kg and 12kg bags, while the beef, rabbit and venison are 6kg and 12kg only.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats between 227 and 262 grams a day, depending on which recipe is in the bowl. Those grams come off about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That puts feeding at between £0.97 and £1.33 a day across the range.