Lovejoys Pure & Simple Grain Free Dry Adult: Scottish Salmon review

All three come out in our Good band, alongside the broad middle of the adult dry shelf, with the lamb reading the strongest of them. These are close cousins rather than different foods, so the gaps come down to how much meat each bag declares and how much of the analysis the plant side ends up carrying. Pick by the animal your dog likes best, because the running order will not tell you much here.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon (36%) (Salmon Meal 25%, Freshly prepared Salmon 11%), Dried Potato (18%), Sweet Potato (18%), Chicken Oil, Dried Peas (5%), Alfalfa, Rapeseed Oil, Whole Linseed (2%), Chicken Digest, Brewers' Yeast, Minerals, Seaweed Meal, Herbs (0.14%) (Marigold, Rosemary, Fennel, Peppermint, Spinach, Thyme, Marjoram, Oregano, Parsley, Sage, Fenugreek Seeds, Comfrey leaves, Rubbed Mint, Green Tea), Prebiotic MOS (0.1%), Prebiotic FOS (0.1%), Fruit (0.1%) (Dried Pumpkin, Dried Carrots, Dried Apples, Dried Tomatoes), Glucosamine (0.04%), Yucca Extract (0.02%), Chondroitin (0.015%), Cranberry Extract (0.01%)

Every bag prints its meat as a split, and that is the detail worth having. The turkey declares 38% turkey, 23% of it turkey meal and 15% freshly prepared; the lamb declares 44%, split 26% meal and 18% fresh; the salmon declares 36%, split 25% meal and 11% fresh. In the oven most of the water in the fresh meat goes. That leaves the meal share doing the protein work, and on all three bags the meal is the bigger half.

The analysis is identical across the range at 28.0% protein and 16.0% fat, converting to 30.4% and 17.4% of dry matter once the assumed moisture is taken out. Estimated carbohydrate lands between 38.0% and 40.0% of dry matter, comfortably under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. The plant side is doing less of the work here than it does in most kibble.

The binding is dried potato and sweet potato, with dried peas at 5% behind them and alfalfa for fibre. There is no cereal in any of the three bags.

The fats are where the recipes stop being quite so simple. All three take chicken oil as the main added fat and chicken digest as the palatant. That puts chicken in the lamb and the salmon as well as the turkey. Salmon oil turns up on the turkey and the lamb, with whole linseed alongside for plant omega 3. Read the list twice if you are running an exclusion trial, because the animal on the front is not the only one inside.

The joint entries are small and specific: glucosamine at 0.04% and chondroitin at 0.015%, with yucca extract at 0.02% for odour. The prebiotic pair here is mannan-oligosaccharides and fructo-oligosaccharides, 0.1% each. Their work is on the gut bacteria, not on the dog directly.

The herb blend at 0.14% runs to fourteen names, from marigold and rosemary through to green tea, and the fruit entry at 0.1% brings pumpkin and carrot alongside apple and tomato. Anything at that level is seasoning. What holds these recipes up is the meat above it and the mineral panel below. Zinc arrives twice there, 333mg as an amino acid chelate and 167mg as sulphate, with manganese at 78mg and selenium as an inactivated yeast at 87mg, each dosed in print.

Salmon at 36%, split 25% salmon meal and 11% freshly prepared salmon, with dried potato and sweet potato level at 18% each. Whole linseed is at 2% here, the largest plant omega 3 share in the range. There is no separate salmon oil entry on this one. The marine oils come through the salmon itself.

Farm Reared Turkey is £6.02 a kilo, Grass Fed Lamb £5.32 and Scottish Salmon £5.96, each sold in a 12kg bag.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, the daily portion is about 231 grams of the turkey, 235 of the lamb and 234 of the salmon. That works out at £1.39 a day on the turkey, £1.25 on the lamb and £1.39 on the salmon. The basis is an energy need of about 840 kcal a day, taken from the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. All three labels ask 180 to 300 grams for a dog between 10kg and 20kg, so trust the waistline over either figure.