Marleybones: Sassy Salmon review

The beef and the lamb finish in our Outstanding band, with the chicken and the salmon a step below in Excellent. That is a fair reading of a recipe that leads with a named meat and keeps the rest short and recognisable. It helps to know where the bar sits. The midpoint of the adult wet shelf is an Excellent band food, so matching it is the everyday standard and no easy win. Marleybones finishes a little ahead. Protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value read Excellent or better on every recipe.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon 42%, White fish 18%, Carrots 6.5%, Peas 4%, Quinoa 3%, Broccoli 1.3%, Parsley 0.8%, Chia Seeds 0.6%, Linseeds 0.5%, Hemp Seed Powder 0.3%, Chicory Root, Yucca.

A single named animal at 60% opens three of the four recipes. On the Sassy Salmon that 60% is split, 42% salmon and 18% white fish. That is a straightforward, checkable claim of the sort many wet labels avoid making. Protein converts to between 39.3% and 42.9% of dry matter, and because moisture here is 72.0% rather than the four fifths a tin usually carries, more of every gram is food.

The vegetables are the same cast with small changes: carrots at 6.5% throughout, then sweet potato or garden peas at 4%, broccoli at 1.3%, and a herb at 0.8%. The herb shifts with the recipe, rosemary on the red meats, sage on the chicken and parsley on the salmon. Quinoa at 3% is the only starchy staple, and it is a pseudo-grain from a spinach relation rather than a cereal, which is why these cartons still read as cereal free.

Chia at 0.6%, linseeds at 0.5% and hemp at 0.3% are the seed trio at the bottom of every list. Their omega-3 is the plant sort, not the marine one, and at these levels it is a garnish. Each label closes on chicory root and yucca, neither carrying a percentage. The chicory brings inulin as a prebiotic, and the yucca deals with the smell the dog leaves behind.

Carbohydrate lands between 6.4% and 17.9% of dry matter across the four, straddling the 15.8% typical of adult wet food, with the beef carton lowest and the salmon highest. Fat runs from 28.6% to 35.7%, so these are richer recipes than most, which is the other half of why the serving is small.

Every entry on the added panel carries a dose in print. Vitamin D3 is at 275 IU per kilo with vitamin A beside it, and iron at 13.2 mg, manganese at 2.2 mg and zinc at 27.5 mg run across all four. Copper is 1.32 mg on the beef and lamb and 3.3 mg on the chicken and salmon. The label gives no calcium figure. That is only a thought for a large breed puppy.

The only fish recipe. Two fish share the 60% animal slot: 42% salmon and 18% white fish, with garden peas at 4% and parsley as the herb. It carries the most carbohydrate of the four at 17.9% of dry matter and the least ash at 7.1%. White fish is the entry with no species behind it, and that matters only to a precise exclusion.

£8.97 a kilo across all four recipes, sold in a 390g carton.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works from about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Feeding then comes to between £5.58 and £6.28 a day depending on the recipe. That corresponds to roughly 622 to 700 grams a day. The feeding guide printed on the carton reads far above that and does not survive a check, so the energy based figures are the ones to plan around.