Lukullus Adult Dry: Barbary Duck & Lamb 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: `New Recipe!` 10kg, Dried duck (21%), potato flakes (10.5%), sweet potato (10%), dried lamb (10%), rice (8.8%), poultry fat, salmon oil (5.5%), seaweed meal, gelatine, linseeds 94%), dried beet pulp, dried apple pomace (4%), herb mix (3.5%), egg powder, hemp seeds (1.5%), hydrolysed poultry liver, green-lipped mussel extract (0.5%), yucca schidigera extract, blueberries (0.3%).

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.

Dried duck at 21% with dried lamb at 10%, on a base of potato flakes at 10.5%, sweet potato at 10% and rice at 8.8%. Salmon oil at 5.5% is a generous inclusion for the format, and gelatine, egg powder and hydrolysed poultry liver fill out the tail. Carbohydrate converts to 48.6% of dry matter, the middle of the three.

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.