Lukullus Senior Cold-Pressed: Angus Beef with Duck review

This earns our Good band, the same band the typical cold-pressed food takes. A named beef lead in dried form, a properly itemised vitamin panel and a real attempt at the older dog's particular needs are the strengths. The ceiling comes from the starch. Rice, millet and potato push carbohydrate to 51.0% of dry matter against 43.2% across cold-pressed food. Protein at 23.6% of dry matter is steady rather than generous for a dog who needs to hold onto muscle.

Ingredients, as declared: Complete food for older dogs. 23.0% Angus beef (dried and ground), 23% whole rice, 6% duck meat (dried and ground), 5.0% potatoes, flaxseed, millet (ground), dried herbs, 5.0% fish oil, seaweed (dried), 2.8% rapeseed oil, beet pulp, dried peat, Yucca schidigera (dried and ground), 0.4% fennel seed, 0.2% apple (dried), mussel meat extract from Perna canaliculus, algal lime

A pressed pellet suits this brief. Pressing at low temperature leaves a piece that is dense but crumbly. A splash of warm water softens it for a dog who eats more slowly than it used to, and it never needs the heavy starch cooking an extruded biscuit depends on.

The beef goes in dried and ground, at 23.0%, so that figure counts meat and not water. Naming the breed as Angus is a piece of specificity you rarely get on a pet food label. Duck at 6% adds a second animal and a change of flavour. Protein finishes at 23.6% of dry matter and fat at 10.7%, a gentle pairing that reads as deliberate for the age group.

Whole rice at 23% is the main carbohydrate, with potatoes at 5.0% and ground millet behind it. Millet is an easy grain for most dogs and carries no gluten, so the cereal side here is kinder than a wheat base would be. Beet pulp and a fibre level of 6.7% of dry matter keep things moving, which counts for more in an old dog than a young one.

Fish oil at 5.0% is a generous inclusion and the reason the omega fats look after themselves, with rapeseed oil at 2.8% making up the rest. Perna canaliculus is the green lipped mussel, and its meat extract is the ingredient most often reached for when joints are the concern. No inclusion figure is printed for it, so the label leaves its weight in the recipe unknown.

The end of the list is where this food gets interesting. Dried peat and the diatomaceous earth in the additives are old European feeding traditions, the first a source of humic material and the second a fine fossil powder used to settle the gut. Dried herbs, fennel seed at 0.4% and dried apple at 0.2% sit at seasoning level, while algal lime is a mineral form of calcium, which matters because no calcium figure appears among the printed analysis.

The vitamin panel is fully itemised: vitamin E at 200mg a kilo, vitamin C at 140mg, niacin at 21mg and the B group running all the way down to biotin. Zinc, copper, manganese and iodine follow. That is more detail than a good many labels bother to give.

£4.17 a kilo. It comes as an economy pack of two 10kg bags.

The label's own guide puts a 15kg dog at 225 to 305 grams a day. On the standard maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75), the figure works out at roughly 260 grams, or £1.08 a day.