Morrisons Chief Meaty Chunks in Jelly: Senior (6 x 400g) review

All three fall in our Average band. Adult wet does well on our scoring and its typical recipe reaches Excellent, so the gap here is wide. It opens on the animal content, not across the whole label. Transparency stops at Good on every pack. The animal content, the cereals and the vegetable entry are umbrella terms, so the recipe can be reformulated between batches and the tin will still read the same. Protein and processing reads Poor on the two tins and Average on the small format, while nutritional balance comes back Good on the tins and Outstanding on the small pack. That is our way of saying the recipe itself is ordinary. A great many dogs have eaten well out of tins like these, and what the band is measuring is the quality of the animal content rather than how well a dog will do on it.

Ingredients, as declared: With Beef - Meat and Animal Derivatives (33%, including 4% Beef), Cereals, Minerals, Various Sugars, With Chicken - Meat and Animal Derivatives (33%, including 4% Chicken), Cereals, Minerals, Various Sugars, With Turkey - Meat and Animal Derivatives (33% including 4% Turkey), Cereals, Minerals, Various Sugars

The animal content on every pack here is meat and animal derivatives, a legal term for the fleshy parts and processing products of slaughtered warm-blooded land animals. It covers everything from very good meat down to the plainest material, and it does not say which animal or which part, so the recipe behind it can be adjusted whenever supply changes. Only the named species, at 4%, is held constant, and that single figure is what distinguishes one flavour from the next.

The jelly is what the range is named for and it earns its place. Setting the liquid around the chunks keeps the meal together in the bowl. For a dog that noses gravy aside and leaves half the dinner behind, that can be the difference between a clean bowl and a wasted one.

The 400g tins carry cereals, and their estimated carbohydrate lands well above the 15.8% of dry matter typical for adult wet food. The 100g format leaves cereals off the list and comes in far lower. Carbohydrate is never printed on a wet label; it is what remains once protein, fat, fibre, ash and moisture have been subtracted, so treat it as a reading and not a declaration.

Various sugars sit on all three labels, undeclared as to quantity. Sweetness is what makes food tempting, and that is exactly why it is in there. Of everything on these packs, this is the entry that most deserves a figure beside it.

There is precision here too, in one corner of the range. The 100g format names chicory at 0.08% and fish oil at 0.15%. Chicory root supplies soluble fibre and works as a prebiotic. Fish oil is a real source of omega-3. Small amounts, but named and measured.

Across the three packs protein converts to between 32.4% and 44.4% of dry matter and fat between 13.9% and 30.6%, which is unremarkable wet food territory. The 400g tins declare calcium, converting to 1.62% and 1.67% of dry matter, both comfortable for an adult dog.

The senior 400g tins, in beef, chicken and turkey, built on the same 33% meat and animal derivatives figure as the adult tins but trimmed at the fat end. Fat is 2.5% as fed, or 13.9% of dry matter, the gentlest reading in the range, with protein at 6.0% and estimated carbohydrate at 38.9% of dry matter. Calcium converts to 1.67% and we estimate 67 kcal per 100g, so portions here are the largest of the three.

£1.69 to £2.44 a kilo across the range, in 400g tins and 100g formats, with cases of 6, 12 and 40.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to between £2.00 and £2.51 a day, or roughly 1027 to 1257 grams. Take 840 kcal a day as the basis (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Portions look big because wet food is mostly water, which is why plenty of owners pair it with a dry meal.