Lukullus Adult Dry: Angus Beef & Duck review

Our Good band takes all three recipes, which is where the typical cold-pressed food sits too, though these come in a shade below that midpoint. Named meats with printed percentages, a proper spread of oils and a genuinely interesting supporting list earn the band. The carbohydrate share and the unnamed poultry entries keep them from climbing further inside it. The Barbary Duck & Lamb finishes highest of the three, with the other two close behind, so nothing here rests on picking the right one.

Cold pressing is a strong field to be measured against, and a band shared with the category's middle is a solid outcome. These are foods built to be fed easily and daily, and that is what they do.

Ingredients, as declared: Complete food for adult dogs of all breeds. 19.3% beef (from Angus beef, dried and ground), 19% wholegrain rice (ground), 12% duck meat (dried and ground), potatoes, linseed, millet (ground), herbs (dried), white fish oil, seaweed (dried), rapeseed oil, beet pulp, dried peat, yucca schidigera (dried and ground), fennel seed, apples (dried), medicinal clay, mussel meat extract from Perna canaliculus, algal lime

Cold pressing shapes everything else. The pellets go through a low temperature press, with none of the cooking and expanding a kibble gets. In water they break apart and do not swell. In the bowl they behave exactly as a dry food does. The format has a long following in Germany and the Netherlands, and this range reads like it was written for that audience.

Before it reaches the press the meat is dried and ground, and that changes how the percentages should be read. Dried beef at 26%, dried duck at 21% and Angus beef at 19.3% each stand for a good deal more fresh meat than the number suggests, because the water came out first. Protein lands between 27.1% and 28.3% of dry matter, and the naming is unusually specific, with Angus and Charolais cattle and Barbary duck all called out.

The carbohydrate side is where these recipes differ most from a meat-led food. Wholegrain rice, maize, potato, potato flakes, sweet potato and millet appear across the three, and carbohydrate converts to between 47.7% and 51.6% of dry matter, above the 43.2% a cold-pressed food typically carries. Millet is worth a word of its own: it is gluten free and generally easy on a dog's digestion, and it reads as a deliberate choice.

The character of each recipe sits in the tail of its list. Linseed and hemp seed bring omega 3 fats, seaweed contributes iodine and trace minerals, apple pomace and beet pulp add fibre, and yucca extract turns up on all three. The Angus recipe goes further than the others with fennel seed, dried peat, medicinal clay and algal lime. That last one is a calcium source derived from seaweed, not from a mineral.

Two entries are worth naming for the honesty they lack. Poultry fat on the Barbary recipe and hydrolysed poultry liver on both it and the Charolais leave the bird unnamed. That is standard practice in European labelling, but it does mean a dog reacting to chicken, turkey or goose cannot be matched to those two recipes with confidence. Everything else on all three lists is specific, so it stands out.

One figure needs its basis said out loud: none of these labels declares a moisture content, so the dry matter column is built on the 8% figure standard for a pressed food. The conversions are reliable enough to compare recipes against each other, and the declared as-fed analysis is the harder number of the two.

Angus beef at 19.3% and duck at 12%, both dried and ground, with wholegrain rice at 19% and potatoes behind them. Only this recipe publishes its full vitamin and trace element panel, and only this one carries millet, dried peat, medicinal clay and algal lime. Protein converts to 27.1% of dry matter with fat at 10.8%, at 327.9 kcal per 100g.

The Charolais Beef & Trout is £4.33 a kilo, the Barbary Duck & Lamb £5.33 and the Angus Beef & Duck £6.33. Bags run from 1.5kg to 10kg, and the Charolais is also sold as four 1.5kg bags together.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75 gives about 840 kcal a day. A day's feeding then comes to £1.06 on the Charolais, £1.36 on the Barbary Duck & Lamb and £1.62 on the Angus Beef & Duck.