Husse Kalv Chunks in Gravy review

Wet food does well on our scoring as a category, the typical adult wet food being an Excellent band food, so an Average band placement here asks to be explained rather than assumed. It comes from the label. Poor is the reading on protein and processing, because the animal content, the plant content and the mineral content are each described by category, with only veal at 5.5% tied to an animal. Transparency reads Excellent. Nutritional balance reads Outstanding, with protein converting to 42.5% of dry matter and fat to 30.0%, which is a genuinely strong showing for a wet recipe. The placement reflects how much of this food is left to the maker's discretion, not any doubt about the dinner itself being wholesome.

Ingredients, as declared: meat and animal derivatives 42% (veal 5.5%), cereals, eggs and eggs derivatives, minerals.

Meat and animal derivatives at 42% is the biggest entry on the list, and veal at 5.5% is the only part of it with a species attached. As a legal term it catches everything: the meaty parts and processing products of warm-blooded land animals. That can be very good or very ordinary, and the pack never says which. It also allows the mix to change between production runs while the wording stays exactly as it is.

Cereals is the second broad term and it works the same way: any grain, in any proportion, chosen on the day. Eggs and eggs derivatives sit behind it, and egg is genuinely useful, dense in high quality protein and easy for a dog to make use of. Between them the plant and egg content brings the estimated carbohydrate to 11.5% of dry matter, still comfortably under the 15.8% typical of adult wet food.

The analysis is decent. Protein converts to 42.5% of dry matter, fat to 30.0%, and energy works out at 97 kcal per 100g, level with the typical adult wet food. The number that jumps out is ash, at 13.5% of dry matter. That is high for a wet recipe, and it says there is a good deal of bone or added mineral in the mix.

Vitamin A, vitamin D3 and vitamin E are dosed in every kilogram and that is the whole declared panel. No trace elements are named alongside them, so the minerals line on the ingredient list carries that job without saying what it holds.

£2.69 a kilo. The 1275 g size is also sold in cases of 12.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to about £2.32 a day, or roughly 864 grams, working from an assumed 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate).