Natural & Delicious N&D Pumpkin Adult Mini review

Our reading puts this in the Good band, the same rung an average adult dry food occupies. The recipe earns it honestly, with lamb named twice in the opening two entries and an estimated carbohydrate of 36.7% of dry matter where a typical dry food runs 46.2%. The additive panel gives the trace minerals in chelated form and prints every dose. Holding it at this level rather than higher is the reliance on pea starch, which is a refined ingredient doing the binding, and a plant tail whose lower entries are too small to change anything.

Ingredients, as declared: lamb (22%), dehydrated lamb protein (20%), pea starch, chicken fat, dried pumpkin (5%), dried eggs, herring, dehydrated herring protein, fish oil (from herring), pea fibre, dried carrot, alfalfa meal, inulin, fructo-oligosaccharides, yeast extract (source of manno-oligo-saccharides), dried blueberry (0.5%), dried apple, dried pomegranate, dried sweet orange, dried spinach, psyllium husks and seeds (0.3%), sodium chloride, dried brewers' yeast, turmeric (0.2%), aloe vera extract, glucosamine, chondroitin sulphate.

The first two entries are both lamb, 22% fresh and then dehydrated lamb protein at 20%. The fresh share is mostly water, which the oven drives off. The dried protein goes in already dry. That is why the second entry matters more than its place on the list. Between them they lift protein to 30.8% of dry matter, with fat at 19.8%, which is a substantial bowl for a small dog eating small amounts.

The range takes its name from pumpkin, and at 5% it is doing genuine work here. Pumpkin is gentle and rich in soluble fibre. It sits easily on a digestion that gets upset by very little, and that describes a good many small dogs. Pea fibre and inulin keep it company, with fructo-oligosaccharides and yeast-derived mannan-oligosaccharides behind them and psyllium husks at 0.3% closing that part of the list.

Pea starch does the binding and supplies most of the carbohydrate. Pea starch is the refined fraction, not the whole pulse. It brings energy and structure without the nutrients a whole pea carries. Its virtue here is keeping the recipe entirely free of cereal. Estimated carbohydrate lands at 36.7% of dry matter, low enough to show how much of this food is animal.

Herring runs through the recipe whole, then as dehydrated protein and again as oil. Those marine omega 3s come ready for a dog to use, and on a small dog the coat shows it first. Dried eggs add a very complete protein for little weight. The added fat is chicken fat. Lamb is the headline, but poultry is in here too.

The declared additives are thorough and worth reading. Per kilo there is zinc at 163.8 mg, manganese at 64.6 mg, iron at 58.3 mg and copper at 15.8 mg. All of them are chelated, and a gut generally absorbs that form more easily. Selenium comes from selenised yeast. Vitamin E is at 600 mg, vitamin C at 150 mg, choline chloride at 2500 mg, DL-methionine at 4000 mg, taurine at 1000 mg and L-carnitine at 300 mg. Aloe vera and turmeric at 0.2% appear in the ingredients themselves. Glucosamine and chondroitin close the list without doses. Read them as a supportive touch and not a measured supplement.

£8.28 a kilo, sold in 800gr, 2.5kg and 7kg bags as the label lists them.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 214 grams a day, on an assumption of around 840 kcal daily (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £1.77 a day. A small dog will eat a good deal less. Treat the figure as a reference point and scale it to your own dog.