Lukullus Adult Tins: Salmon & Chicken review

All four land in our Excellent band, close enough together that none of them needs avoiding. Worth knowing what that means here: the middle of the adult wet shelf is itself an Excellent band food. Matching it takes a tin that puts most of its weight into animal, and each of these does. Protein and processing reads Excellent throughout, while nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding on every tin.

Ingredients, as declared: Complete food for adult dogs of all breeds. Salmon and chicken with millet, thyme & olive oil: 46 % consisting of chicken hearts, chicken meat, chicken livers, chicken necks, chicken stomachs, 27.4 % stock, 20 % salmon, 5 % millet, 1 % minerals, 0.5 % olive oil, 0.1 % thyme.

Three of the four recipes pair two 33% meat blocks, and the Salmon & Chicken breaks the pattern with chicken at 46% and salmon at 20%. Meat stock follows at between 26.5% and 27.5%, declared as stock rather than slipped in as water. Protein converts to between 42.1% and 48.7% of dry matter, which is a solidly meat-led reading for a tinned food.

Inside those blocks the offal does much of the work: hearts, liver, lung, rumen, necks and stomachs, all named. A good deal of the vitamin and trace mineral content comes from there. It is also why the rumen, better known as tripe, tends to turn a picky eater around. Rabbit, game and goose are meats a British dog is unlikely to have met before. For a household still working out what sets their dog off, that makes this range a sensible first stop.

The grain is present and small. Rice at 3% on the Rabbit & Game and millet at 5% on the Salmon & Chicken. Barley at 3% on the Turkey Hearts & Goose and oat flakes at 3% on the Wild Rabbit & Turkey. Each comes with a fruit or a vegetable alongside. Millet and oats are gentle carriers, while barley carries gluten. Carbohydrate converts to between 7.0% and 21.3% of dry matter across the four. The Wild Rabbit & Turkey sits far below the 15.8% typical of adult wet food, and the Salmon & Chicken a fair way above it.

A single named oil closes each list at 0.5%, linseed on the rabbit, olive on the salmon and safflower on the other two, so nothing appears as an anonymous blend of oils and fats. Fat lands between 22.9% and 30.4% of dry matter, most of it coming from the meat rather than the bottle.

Every tin carries the same added panel, and every line of it has a dose printed. Vitamin D3 at 200 IU, vitamin E at 30 mg, biotin at 300 mcg, zinc at 15 mg, manganese at 3 mg and iodine at 0.75 mg per kilo. Calcium is declared on three of the four labels, at 0.92% to 0.96% of dry matter, which is a comfortable level for adult maintenance.

The only fish recipe, with chicken at 46% and salmon at 20%, millet at 5% and olive oil in place of the usual seed oil. At 107 kcal per 100g this tin is the lightest here, and its carbohydrate is the highest at 21.3% of dry matter. The millet works harder here than the grains elsewhere in the range.

£3.33 a kilo on all four recipes. The tins are 400g and 800g, in packs of 6. All but the Turkey Hearts & Goose are also offered in 24 tin saver packs.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at between £2.43 and £2.61 a day depending on the recipe. The basis is about 840 kcal a day, using the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. That corresponds to roughly 730 to 785 grams a day.