Natural & Delicious N&D Spirulina Adult Medium & Maxi: Herring, Spirulina & Wolfberry review

Both recipes finish in our Excellent band by the same route. Each bag declares a large share as named meat, the carbohydrate load sits below what a dry food usually carries, and the full mineral panel is chelated. Carbohydrate converts to 35.8% of dry matter in the herring and 36.7% in the lamb, where the typical adult dry food runs at 46.2% and sits a band lower, in our Good band. Nothing about the pair is showy. The numbers simply stack up in the right direction.

Ingredients, as declared: herring (24%), dehydrated herring protein (23%), sweet potato, fish oil (from herring), dried spirulina (5%), linseed, dried wolfberry (2.5%), pea fibre, dried carrot, alfalfa meal, inulin, fructo-oligosaccharides, yeast extract (source of manno-oligo-saccharides), dried spinach, psyllium husks and seeds, sodium chloride, dried brewers' yeast, turmeric, aloe vera extract, glucosamine, chondroitin sulphate.

Herring at 24% and dehydrated herring protein at 23% open one bag. Lamb at 22% and dehydrated lamb protein at 20% open the other. That split is the useful part. Fresh meat is mostly water by weight, and the oven takes it. The dehydrated entry therefore carries much of the protein you actually feed, and at roughly a fifth of each recipe it is sized to do exactly that. The analysis follows: protein converts to 33.0% of dry matter in the herring and 30.8% in the lamb.

Sweet potato is the only substantial starch in either recipe. Pea fibre and psyllium husks sit behind it, there for fibre and not for filling. No cereal appears anywhere, so both bags hold to the grain-free promise, and alfalfa meal, dried carrot and dried spinach follow at modest inclusions.

The bag takes its name from spirulina at 5%, a blue green algae grown for pigments and micronutrients, not for bulk. Dried wolfberry at 2.5% is the goji berry under another name. Inulin and fructo-oligosaccharides sit nearby to feed the gut bacteria, with a yeast extract supplying manno-oligo-saccharides for the same purpose.

Glucosamine and chondroitin sulphate close the list, which is where joint ingredients usually land and also where they are hardest to size up, since neither carries a printed quantity here. Their presence still counts in a food built for bigger frames, and turmeric with aloe vera extract sits just ahead of them as the label's herbal touch.

Where the label does put numbers down it is generous with them. Chelates are the form the trace minerals arrive in, and a gut generally takes that up more readily. Selenium comes from an inactivated selenised yeast, not from a plain salt. Taurine is declared at 1000mg and L-carnitine at 300mg, with DL-methionine at 4000mg behind them, so the amino acid support is printed in full rather than implied.

Herring at 24% with dehydrated herring protein at 23%, and every animal entry in the bag comes from the same fish, right down to the oil. Fish is the only allergen the label declares, which makes this the tidier of the two for a dog being narrowed to one animal. At 30.0% as fed this bag holds the higher protein of the two, with calcium at 0.88% of dry matter.

Both flavours come in bags running from 2kg up to 7kg.

As a guide, take around 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That dog eats about 211 grams a day of the herring or 214 grams of the lamb. The label's own table asks 120 to 220 grams for that same dog. Where they disagree, the waistline decides.