Nourish Grain Free Pâté: Salmon With Sweet Potato, Garden Vegetables & Herbs review

The lamb and the turkey finish together in our Excellent band, with the salmon a shade higher in Outstanding. The typical adult wet food reaches Excellent too, and these pâtés hold their own in that company, helped by a construction that is unusually plain: one animal, a little dried vegetable, and not much else. Protein and processing reads Excellent on all three, and nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding. Protein converts to about 40% of dry matter across the range and the carbohydrate estimate stays low. It is 11.4% on the Lamb and Turkey and 4.0% on the Salmon, against 15.8% for adult wet food generally.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon (65%), Dried Sweet Potato (1%, equivalent to 4% Sweet Potato), Dried Carrot (0.5%, equivalent to 4.5% Carrot), Dried Peas, Dried Broccoli, Minerals, Vegetable Oil, Rosemary, Thyme, Dried Seaweed, MOS, Glucosamine (0.004%), Chondroitin (0.002%), Cranberry Extract, Yucca Extract.

The claim worth checking on any single protein food is whether a second animal turns up further down the list, and here none does. The only animal entry in each recipe is its own lamb, salmon or turkey at 65%, and the added oil is a plant oil. A dog on an exclusion trial meets no fish oil, no hydrolysate and no generic animal fat here. The lamb and the turkey are described as freshly prepared, meaning the wet meat before cooking rather than a dried meal.

The vegetables are handled with more arithmetic than most labels bother with. Dried sweet potato at 1% is shown as the equivalent of 4% sweet potato, and dried carrot at 0.5% as the equivalent of 4.5% carrot. You can see both what went in and what it came from. Carrot brings vitamin A and soluble fibre with it, and cooked it digests easily. Dried peas and broccoli follow without figures.

Vegetable oil is the one general term on the list. It covers any oil of plant origin. Where a label names its oil you learn something about the fat you are feeding. If that detail matters to you, this is the entry most worth an email to the maker. Fat itself converts to 31.8% of dry matter on the Lamb and Turkey and 40.0% on the Salmon.

Below the vegetables the list turns to supplements. Rosemary and thyme come first, then dried seaweed for its iodine and minerals and MOS from yeast cell walls as a prebiotic. Cranberry and yucca extracts follow, with the joint pair of glucosamine at 0.004% and chondroitin at 0.002%. Those last two are the amounts of a daily top up, sensible enough in an adult bowl and not a stand in for a vet's dosing.

The added mineral panel is fully dosed and reaches further than many. Iodine and selenium are named alongside zinc, iron, copper and manganese. Vitamins A and E are on every recipe, with D3 on the Lamb and Turkey. Calcium is the figure that moves, converting to 3.18% of dry matter on the Lamb, 2.73% on the Turkey and 1.6% on the Salmon. On the two meat recipes that puts the mineral load at the generous end for adult maintenance.

Salmon at 65%, the only fish recipe and much the richest of the set, with fat converting to 40.0% of dry matter and energy at 124 kcal per 100g. Carbohydrate comes out lowest of the three, at 4.0% of dry matter, and calcium is the most moderate at 1.6%.

All three recipes are £3.36 a kilo. There is one size, 395g, sold on its own or by the case of 12.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in steady condition comes to £2.94 a day on the Lamb or the Turkey and £2.28 a day on the denser Salmon. That is about 875 grams and 677 grams respectively. Those rest on an energy need in the region of 840 kcal daily, the figure the 110 × bodyweight^0.75 maintenance rule produces.