Guru Highland Game Cold Pressed review

It shares our Good band with the typical cold-pressed food, sitting a little inside the mark rather than over it. What earns the place is the itemisation. Wild boar at 14%, venison at 8% and duck at 8% tell you far more than the word game on its own, and the vegetable entries carry percentages too. Holding it back is a modest analysis: protein converts to 25.0% of dry matter and fat to 9.2%. An ash figure of 10.3% is high for a pressed food, and the label stops short of printing vitamin and mineral doses. Judge it as the lean, unusual-meat option it is, and the band word looks about right.

Ingredients, as declared: Game 30% (Dried Wild Boar 14%, Dried Venison 8%, Dried Duck 8%), Brown Rice (thermally pre-treated), (25%), Sweet Potato, Mixed Vegetables (chicory powder (4%), pumpkin (4%), carrots (4%), broad beans, peas), Seaweed, Beet Pulp, Cold Pressed Linseed Oil, Dried Fruits (apple, blackcurrant), MOS and Beta-glucans, Yucca Schidigera, Gelatine, Dried Herbs (parsley, rosemary, green tea extract), Green Lipped Mussels.

Game is declared at 30% and then broken open, which is the part worth applauding. Wild boar at 14% is a meat almost nothing else on the shelf uses, venison at 8% is lean and well liked, and duck at 8% is the familiar one of the three. A label that writes game and leaves it there tells you nothing about what changes between batches, whereas this one lets an owner with a reactive dog make a real decision.

Brown rice at 25% arrives thermally pre-treated, and that step is what makes its starch digestible in a food never cooked at high heat. Sweet potato follows it. Together they leave carbohydrate converting to 48.4% of dry matter. That is over the 43.2% middle for cold-pressed food, and it is the trade a lean recipe comes with.

The vegetable group is the most transparent part of the list, with chicory powder, pumpkin and carrots each at 4% and broad beans and peas behind them. Chicory brings inulin, and the useful gut bacteria feed on that soluble fibre. Beet pulp appears separately as a second fibre source. That is how crude fibre reaches 7.1% of dry matter, a genuinely high figure and the reason this food fills a dog up on fewer calories.

The fat is light and comes from one place, cold pressed linseed oil, which brings the plant form of omega 3 along with it. With no fish oil anywhere, the omega 3 in this recipe is entirely of plant origin, which is a straightforward consequence of building a food with no marine ingredients in it. Total fat converts to 9.2% of dry matter.

Finishing the list are seaweed, dried apple and blackcurrant, MOS and beta-glucans as prebiotic fibres, yucca schidigera and gelatine. A dried herb trio of parsley, rosemary and green tea extract follows, and dried green lipped mussels for the joints. None carries a dose. Two figures are worth knowing plainly: ash converts to 10.3% of dry matter and calcium to 1.96%. That calcium level sits over what is normally recommended for a growing large breed puppy, so check with your vet before using it for one.

£5.34 a kilo. Bags are 5kg and 13kg.

It is a light food at 308 kcal per 100g, so portions run larger than the bag size suggests. A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing about 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), would eat around 272 grams, which is £1.45 a day.