Nature's Harvest Cold Pressed Adult: Chicken And Sweet Potato Pie review

Our scoring separates the pair. The chicken finishes in our Excellent band and the fish in our Good band, where the middle of the cold-pressed field settles as well. A named meat at the front of each list and a fully printed vitamin and mineral panel are what earn the band. The pair are held back by the starch a pressed pellet needs to hold its shape. Even so, carbohydrate at 34.5% of dry matter on both recipes runs below the 43.2% usual for the format. Transparency reads Outstanding on both. Protein and processing, nutritional balance and value all read Excellent for the chicken, then Good for the fish.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried Ground Chicken 42%, Sweet Potato 20%, Beet Pulp, Peas, Chicken Oil 3.3%, Carrots, Apples, Seaweed, Chicory Inulin, Fennel Seed, Sage Leaf, Thyme, Nettle, Oregano, Chondroitin, Glucosamine, Turmeric, Dandelion Root, Linseed Oil, Rapeseed Oil.

Understanding the cold pressing comes first with this pair. The pellets are formed under pressure at a far lower temperature than the extrusion used for ordinary kibble, so less heat passes through the ingredients. In liquid the finished pellet crumbles, where extruded kibble expands. Nature's Harvest presses both recipes the same way and changes only the animal at the front of the list.

That animal arrives dried and ground before pressing, which is why 42% chicken and 49% ocean fish translate into protein figures of 38.1% and 37.1% of dry matter. Dried meat carries a fraction of the water fresh meat does, so those inclusion percentages are worth more than the same numbers on a wet label. The fat follows the same animal in each case, chicken oil in one recipe and fish oil in the other.

On the plant side, sweet potato at 20% comes first, then beet pulp and peas, with no cereal of any kind. Sweet potato brings its starch with fibre and beta carotene attached, and beet pulp is a gentle, steady fibre that tends to show up in firmer stools. Peas add a little plant protein on top of the meat, and at the quantity used here they read as a proper ingredient with no sense of padding.

Things get interesting at the tail of the list. Chondroitin and glucosamine are the joint pair most owners otherwise buy as a separate supplement, chicory inulin is a prebiotic fibre, and seaweed brings iodine along with a spread of trace minerals. Behind them come fennel, sage, thyme, nettle, oregano, turmeric and dandelion root, sitting at the far end of the list where they read as character rather than nutrition. No doses are printed for the joint pair, so their scale is not something you can check from the pack.

The vitamin and mineral panel, by contrast, is printed in full and dosed per kilo. Vitamin C at 50mg and vitamin K at 2mg both appear where plenty of foods leave them out, and the trace elements are itemised down to selenium at 0.1mg. The selenium is sodium selenite. Most makers reach for that form, and owners who prefer selenised yeast will spot it. The chicken recipe converts calcium to 1.79% of dry matter and the fish to 1.64%, comfortable adult figures for a food of this build.

Dried ground chicken at 42% leads and chicken oil at 3.3% supplies the fat. Chicken is the one animal named anywhere on the composition. Fat converts to 10.7% of dry matter at 360 kcal per 100g, making this the leaner of the two. Its omega 3 fats come from linseed oil, where the fish recipe takes them from the fish itself.

The chicken recipe is £11.50 a kilo and the fish £11.98. Both come in a 3kg bag.

Reckon a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition at about 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75). That is roughly 233 grams a day of the chicken, or £2.68, and about 227 grams of the fish, or £2.72. The label's own chart puts a 10kg to 20kg dog at 120 to 240 grams a day.