Lifestage Grain Free Chunks in Gravy Cans: Beef review

The Good band is where this can finishes, one step below the Excellent band that the middle of the wet shelf occupies. Two things pull against it. Chicken and its own bone broth make a genuinely strong opening. The animal content behind them goes down as seafood and seafood derivatives, with no species named, and a wheat flour sits in a recipe whose name promises grain free. Add an undeclared ash figure, which stops the analysis being converted onto a dry matter basis, and there is less on show here than a scoring system can reward. Nothing in the can looks poor. This is a sound chunks in gravy recipe whose label has not been kept honest with itself.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken, Chicken Bone Broth, Seafood & Seafood Derivatives, Vegetable Extract, Potato, Wheat Flour, Coconut Oil, Fish Oil, Flaxseeds

Chicken opens the list and chicken bone broth follows it, which is a better start than most cans of chunks manage. Broth counts as animal content in a way that plain added water does not. Naming it to the same species as the meat above it is the mark of a recipe someone has thought about.

Seafood and seafood derivatives is the entry that gives least away. It is a category term, and it can cover any species of fish or shellfish and any part of them. What goes into the mix is free to change while that wording stays put. For most dogs that is a shrug. For a household running an exclusion diet it is the sentence that rules the can out.

Potato and wheat flour carry the gravy. Of the cereals, wheat sits behind more grain intolerances in dogs than any other, and finding it in a range named grain free sits oddly. A dog that reacts to wheat wants a different Lifestage tin. For a dog with no such history it is doing an ordinary job of thickening.

The fats are well chosen. Coconut oil, fish oil and flaxseeds between them cover both the saturated and the omega rich side. Fish oil in particular is the ingredient most owners are looking for when they think about coat and joints. Vegetable extract sits alongside them as another term that says less than it might.

The added panel is long for a wet food. Vitamins A, B1, B6, B12, D3, E and K appear with niacin, riboflavin, folic acid, biotin, calcium pantothenate and choline chloride, then zinc and manganese as their sulphate salts. No figures come with them, so the panel is described here rather than quoted, but a list that full is more than most cans print.

On the analysis, protein is 7.0% and fat 5.0% as fed against 82.0% moisture, which is a moderate rather than a rich can. Without a declared ash figure those cannot be put onto a dry matter footing, so they are best read as they stand.

£3.54 a kilo, in 400 g cans sold twelve to a case.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would get through roughly 1098 grams a day, close to three cans, which comes to about £3.89. That works from a maintenance target of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75) and from our own energy estimate for the can, since the label declares none.