Natures Deli Grain Free Senior Wet Food review

This tray lands in our Excellent band and sits close to the top of it, with protein and processing reading Excellent and transparency Outstanding. Naming nearly every entry, printing the fresh equivalent of the dried ones and putting a figure against the supplements is exactly the kind of openness a scoring system can reward. Nutritional balance comes back Excellent too. The typical wet food shares this band, so a placing this high in it puts the tray well above the middle of a category that already scores well.

It is worth saying that a senior recipe is not judged on a different scale here. This one is measured against every adult wet food we score, and it comes out ahead of most of them.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 60%, Potato 20% (from 4.9% Dried Potato), Vegetables 10% (from 1.8% Dried Carrots and Peas), Minerals, Sunflower Oil 0.75%, Potato Starch, Salmon Oil 0.3%, D-Xylose, Tomato Powder, Dried Kelp, Chicory Root 0.02%, Dried Basil, Fruit and Plant Extracts, Glucosamine 0.005%, Yucca Powder, Chondroitin Sulphate 0.002%.

The list opens with chicken at 60%, and no other animal joins it. Protein converts to 36.0% of dry matter and fat to 28.0%. That is a moderate, unfussy analysis, enough for an older dog who does less these days without leaving them short of protein. Energy is declared, not estimated, at 114 kcal per 100g.

Potato at 20% carries the starch, and the label explains it comes from 4.9% dried potato, with a vegetable share of 10% coming from 1.8% dried carrots and peas. Potato starch appears again further down as a binder. Carbohydrate is not declared, so we estimate it, and it converts to 20.0% of dry matter against the 15.8% typical of adult wet food. Building a grain-free tray around potato tends to do that.

The tail is where the senior thinking lives. Sunflower oil at 0.75% and salmon oil at 0.3% look after skin and coat. Chicory root at 0.02% is the prebiotic, food for the gut's own bacteria, and dried kelp brings trace minerals and iodine. Tomato powder, dried basil, yucca powder and a fruit and plant extract blend fill out the rest at trace level, and D-xylose is a simple plant sugar sitting at the same sort of level.

Glucosamine at 0.005% and chondroitin at 0.002% are both printed, which is more than most senior labels are willing to say, though the amounts are modest. Read them as a helping hand built into dinner rather than as treatment, and keep an arthritic dog on whatever their vet has prescribed alongside.

The added panel is fully itemised: vitamins A, D3 and E, then zinc, iron, copper, manganese, iodine and selenium, each with a printed figure per kilo. Selenium comes as sodium selenite, which is what nearly every maker uses.

Sold in a 395g tray.

There is no per-kilo figure to quote for this tray. On portions, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat around 737 grams a day, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). An older dog taking life more gently will often need a little under that.