Morrisons Chief Pate Trays 150g: With Beef review

The beef tray lands in our Good band and the chicken tray a step below it in our Average band. The typical adult wet food reaches Excellent, so the distance is genuine, and it is measured almost entirely in what these labels decline to name. The animal content, the oils and the vegetable entry are all umbrella terms, and the 4% species is the only thing nailed down. Protein and processing reads Average on both trays while nutritional balance reads Outstanding, and the analysis panel backs that up. The band is a comment on disclosure, not a warning about what is in the tray. A plain own-label pate that a dog finishes happily is doing most of what an owner asks of it.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (60%, including 4% Beef), Minerals, Oils and Fats (0.2% Fish Oil), Various Sugars, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.1% Chicory)

The whole animal side of each tray arrives as one entry, meat and animal derivatives at 60%. Under EU labelling rules that phrase covers the fleshy parts and processing products of slaughtered warm-blooded land animals. It is broad enough to include very good meat and plain material alike, and broad enough for the mix to change with supply. At 4%, the named species is the one fixed point on each label. Beef is guaranteed in the beef tray and chicken in the chicken one, and neither figure rules anything else out.

No grain of any kind is listed, and no starch binder either. Carbohydrate works out at an estimated 13.2% of dry matter against the 15.8% typical for adult wet food. That is a good showing for a pate, because the easiest route to a smooth texture is to build one around cereal.

Fish oil at 0.2% is named inside the broader oils and fats entry, bringing omega-3 with it. Chicory at 0.1% is named inside derivatives of vegetable origin, and chicory root is a useful prebiotic. Both are traces, but a label that opens up two of its own category terms is doing more than it strictly has to.

Various sugars complete the list without a quantity attached. It is there because dogs find sweetness hard to resist, and on a tray meant to be finished in one sitting that is doing exactly what the maker intends.

The panel reads steadily: 9.0% protein and 5.0% fat as fed, converting to 47.4% and 26.3% of dry matter, with 81% moisture and ash at 10.5% of dry matter. Energy is not printed, and our estimate puts these at about 83 kcal per 100g, so a fair weight of tray goes into a full day's feeding.

The added panel is the most detailed thing on these labels, and every entry on it is dosed. Per kilogram of food that is vitamin D3 at 140 IU, vitamin E at 30 mg, zinc at 12 mg, copper at 0.5 mg, manganese at 1.0 mg and iodine at 0.3 mg. That is a fuller micronutrient declaration than a lot of wet labels bother with.

The beef tray, with beef named at 4% inside the 60% animal content. Beef is a red meat, well liked by most dogs and easy for them to digest, and it is the option to reach for in a household rotating away from poultry. The analysis is shared with the chicken tray, so this is a change of flavour rather than a change of recipe.

£1.97 a kilo, in 150g and 300g trays.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to about £2.00 a day, or roughly 1014 grams, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). For a dog of that weight the tray itself suggests 750 to 1050 grams a day.