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

Our scoring lands both flavours in the Good band, and the reasons are plain enough. Each bag puts a big share into named animal, and the mineral panel is complete and chelated. Carbohydrate comes out at 35.8% of dry matter in the herring and 36.7% in the lamb, where a dry food typically carries 46.2%. The typical bag of adult dry food sits in our Good band too, so this is a comfortable place in a crowded field rather than a step outside it.

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.

Read the first two entries together and you get the real picture. The herring recipe declares herring at 24% and dehydrated herring protein at 23%; the lamb declares lamb at 22% and dehydrated lamb protein at 20%. Fresh meat is largely water before cooking, so it is the dehydrated half whose weight survives the oven. A dried entry of that size is what holds protein at 33.0% of dry matter in the herring, 30.8% in the lamb.

Sweet potato is the starch. The fibre side is pea fibre and psyllium husks. Alfalfa meal comes next with dried carrot and dried spinach at small inclusions, and neither bag holds any cereal.

The name ingredient, dried spirulina at 5%, is an algae used for its pigment and micronutrient content, and dried wolfberry at 2.5% is the berry more often met as goji. Inulin and fructo-oligosaccharides go in for the gut bacteria, and a yeast extract brings manno-oligo-saccharides towards the same end.

Glucosamine and chondroitin sulphate appear last and undosed. That is the usual place for them and the usual silence on quantity. Read them as a welcome inclusion, not a measured joint programme. Turmeric and aloe vera extract sit immediately ahead of them.

The supplement panel is where this label really opens up. Zinc at 163.8mg, manganese at 64.6mg, iron at 58.3mg and copper at 15.8mg are all declared as chelates. A dog absorbs that form more easily. Selenium comes from an inactivated selenised yeast, and taurine at 1000mg with L-carnitine at 300mg round the whole thing off.

The only animal in this bag is herring, and it turns up three times: fresh at 24%, dehydrated as a protein at 23%, and again as the oil. The label declares one allergen only, and that is fish. Narrowing a small dog down to a single animal is easier with this bag than with the lamb. Protein reaches 30.0% as fed, the higher of the two, and calcium sits at 0.88% of dry matter.

£11.99 a kilo for both flavours, sold in 2kg bags.

On the yardstick we use across dry foods, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition takes around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is about 211 grams a day of the herring at £2.54, or 214 grams of the lamb at £2.57. This is a small-breed kibble, so most bowls will be far smaller than that: the label asks 60 to 110 grams a day for a 5kg dog.