Husse Ocean Care Mini review

Our scoring puts Ocean Care Mini in the Average band, one rung under the Good reading that the middle of the adult dry shelf gets. The reading is a fair one. Protein converts to 26.1% of dry matter, with carbohydrate at 48.3%, a shade above the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. The rice, then, is doing a solid share of the carrying. What a band cannot show is how neatly the recipe fits its brief, which is a small dog on a fish-first diet with the omega sources doubled up.

Ingredients, as declared: salmon, rice, rice flour, animal fat, linseed, vegetable fibres, hydrolysed animal protein, yeast, salmon oil, salt, fructo-oligosaccharides (0.3%), potassium chloride, lecithin (0.1%), sea algae, Tagetes.

Salmon heads the list, and no percentage is printed for it, so the exact share stays between the maker and the mixer. The analysis is the best guide to where it lands: protein at 24.0% as fed, 26.1% once the declared 8.0% moisture comes out, with fat at 14.0%. That is a middling protein for a dry food and a comfortable fat level for a small dog with a normal amount of get up and go.

Starch duty falls to rice and rice flour, a gentle pairing that most dogs digest without fuss, and vegetable fibres bring crude fibre up to 3.0%. Vegetable fibre is the friendlier name most makers give beet pulp, and it earns its keep by settling the gut rather than by feeding the dog.

The omega side is doubled up on purpose. Salmon oil brings the marine forms a dog can put to work straight away, while linseed adds the plant version along with fibre and a set of natural antioxidants. Together they are the reason this recipe leans towards skin and coat.

You can see the thinking at the tail of the list. Fructo-oligosaccharides at 0.3% are a prebiotic, feeding the large intestine's friendly bacteria. The yeast just above them is the usual source of the mannan-oligosaccharides that do a similar job from another angle. Sea algae brings iodine and trace minerals, and Tagetes, better known as the marigold, is there for its lutein, a pigment that turns up in talk about eyes.

One point deserves a straight answer. Ordinary practice, and no reflection on the quality: the animal fat stops short of naming a species, as does the hydrolysed animal protein. It does mean the salmon headline cannot be read as fish and nothing else. For a dog with a firm poultry diagnosis that matters. For everyone else it simply reads as a fish-led food.

The rest of the panel is printed out in full. Iron is at 201 mg/kg, zinc at 108 mg/kg plus a further 12 mg/kg from a second source, manganese at 63 mg/kg and selenium at 0.2 mg/kg. Calcium works out at 1.36% of dry matter, a settled level for an adult, and clinoptilolite at 10 g/kg is a natural clay that keeps the kibble flowing in the bag.

£5.13 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 7kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 212 grams a day. That assumes around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which works out at £1.09 a day. For a small breed recipe the label's own table is the more useful guide. It stops at 10kg, where it asks 110 to 130 grams, and the daily figure for a dog that size lands a good deal lower.