Natural Greatness Veterinary Wet: Renal-Oxalate review

Ingredients, as declared: Beef (22%), Chicken (20%), Potatoes (10%), Minerals (1%), Salmon oil (0.5%), Potassium citrate (0.1%).

The statements here are strikingly brief, four or five entries in most cases, with the meat percentage printed at the front. That makes them quick to read, but minerals appear only as a category and no additive panel is given, so the vitamin and trace mineral doses are nowhere on the label.

Meat sits high across the line. Turkey at 50% in the gastrointestinal recipe, chicken at 56% in the joint one, chicken at 40% with turkey at 28% in the obesity recipe. The hepatic and urinary ones write chicken by part: stomach, liver, fat and neck. Naming the parts is more candour than a category heading would give you.

Fish comes in as an oil in five of the six, so the urinary recipe is the only one that leaves it out. Cottage cheese at 5% brings dairy into the hepatic recipe and beef liver at 5% brings beef into the urinary one, both easy to overlook on a list this short.

Plant matter is sparse by design. Where an entry appears it is pumpkin, potato, sweet potato or quinoa, and the joint recipe carries none at all. The obesity recipe uses cellulose at 3% purely as bulk, a purified plant fibre that travels through a dog largely undigested. Glucosamine and chondroitin sulphate are dosed in the joint and obesity recipes only, with MSM alongside them in the joint one.

Four of the six print their moisture and two do not, so a couple of the dry matter columns rest on a standard assumption. Take the water out of a recipe leaning on organ meat and fat and the fat figure climbs, as far as 47.3%. That is the arithmetic of a rich loaf, not a fault in it. Picking between them is a conversation for the practice rather than something to settle from a label.

Beef at 22% and chicken at 20% share the meat here, with potatoes at 10%, minerals at 1%, salmon oil at 0.5% and potassium citrate at 0.1%. It is the only wet recipe in the line with beef muscle meat in it, and the potassium citrate is the entry that marks it out as a urinary formulation.

Moisture is declared at 78.0%. Protein converts to 26.8% of dry matter, the most restricted in the wet line. Fat runs to 47.3%, carbohydrate is estimated at 15.4%, calcium reads 0.64% and energy 124 kcal per 100g. Restraining protein while fat supplies the calories is how a kidney recipe is normally drawn up.

Each recipe is sold in a single 400g pack.