Natures Menu Delicious Pate Pouches: Chicken with Vegetables review

All four pouches finish inside our Excellent band, the beef a fraction ahead of the three behind it. The adult wet category scores strongly and its midpoint sits in the same band, so this range is keeping company with a good field rather than pulling clear of it. The construction is what carries it: a declared 60% animal content on every label and a plant list of three entries. Estimated carbohydrate runs between 4.0% and 8.3% of dry matter, where typical adult wet food sits at 15.8%. Every recipe returns Outstanding for nutritional balance and transparency, with Excellent for protein and processing and for value across all four. The choice between them is genuinely about the animal your dog prefers.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 60%, Peas 4%, Carrots 4%, Rice 2%, Minerals

The four labels are built to the same plan. Sixty per cent of each pouch is declared animal content, whether that is one animal or two, and the remainder is peas at 4%, carrots at 4% and rice at 2%. It is a short list, all of it weighed, and short lists are easier to check against a dog who reacts to things.

Once moisture comes out the analysis reads well. Protein converts to between 47.0% and 52.0% of dry matter and fat to between 26.5% and 31.3%. That is a properly meat-led profile for a pate. The rice at 2% is there for texture more than for calories, and it shows: the starch estimate stays low on all four.

The beef pouch is the one to read twice. Tripe at 20% is a genuinely useful ingredient, dense in protein and fat and famously easy on a dog's digestion. Which animal it came from, though, the label never says. Tripe usually comes from cattle, though sheep, goats, pigs and deer all provide it, so for a household excluding one animal precisely that entry stays open.

The added panels are short and dosed, covering vitamin D3, vitamin E, zinc, manganese and iodine, with copper appearing on some labels and the turkey pouch also carrying sodium selenite. Selenium has to be in a complete food and this is the common form of it in British pet food, so its presence tells you the recipe is meeting requirements rather than cutting a corner.

Chicken at 60%, with not one other animal anywhere on the list. This is the pouch to reach for when you are excluding everything but one bird. It is also the lightest of the four at 91 kcal per 100g alongside the turkey.

£8.00 a kilo across all four, in a single 300g pouch.

As a guide, take about 840 kcal a day as maintenance for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard estimate). That works out at between £6.11 and £7.38 a day depending on the recipe. That is roughly 764 to 923 grams. The label's guide for a dog of 10 to 25kg is 450 grams a day on the beef pouch and 600 grams on the other three.