Nulo Land & Sea Pate: Beef with Salmon review

Both recipes read Outstanding on our scale. The midpoint of the adult wet category sits a band below in Excellent, and between the two it is the Chicken with Halibut a shade ahead of the Beef with Salmon. Nutritional balance is the standout pillar at Outstanding, which is what a protein reading of around half of dry matter and a carbohydrate estimate close to the floor will do for a wet recipe. Protein and processing reads Excellent on both, with transparency Excellent on the Beef with Salmon and Outstanding on the Chicken with Halibut: the animals are named and the headline meats carry percentages.

Ingredients, as declared: Beef broth, beef meat (30%), chicken meat (26%), chicken broth, salmon (4%), pumpkin, pea flour, minerals, chicken flavour, salmon oil, linseed, inulin, seaweed meal, parsley.

Both recipes lead on named animal entries with percentages against the headline meats. Chicken meat takes 59% of the Chicken with Halibut. The Beef with Salmon splits its animal content between beef at 30% and chicken at 26%, with salmon at 4% giving the recipe its name rather than its bulk. Naming the species and printing a figure is the part that matters, and the range does it consistently.

Broth is the second big entry in each, and both broths are named for the animal in the meat beside them. It is what makes a pate spreadable, and it is also why the moisture readings are as high as 80.0% and 81.0%.

The plant side is deliberately slight: pumpkin and pea flour, with linseed, inulin, seaweed meal and parsley below them. Pea flour is a milled pea, so it brings a little plant protein along with its starch. At this level its job is binding the pate. Carbohydrate converts to 2.5% and 2.6% of dry matter, about as low as a wet recipe goes.

Linseed and seaweed meal are the quiet workers at the bottom. Linseed carries plant omega 3 and fibre. Seaweed brings iodine and a spread of minerals, and inulin is a prebiotic fibre for the gut. Chicken flavour sits among them, which is the one entry in either list that does not say precisely what it is.

Vitamins A and E are printed with doses. The trace elements are published as a panel of their own, each with a figure per kilo: copper and iodine, then manganese and zinc, with iron behind them. The added mineral list is short, which a recipe carrying this much meat can comfortably get away with.

Beef at 30% with chicken at 26% and salmon at 4%, so the front of the pack names the smallest of its three animals. This pack is the richer at 103 kcal per 100g, with fat converting to 35.0% of dry matter. Salmon oil joins the list here, where the other recipe has none.

Both recipes come in a single 340g size.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in steady condition works out at roughly 816 grams a day of the Beef with Salmon, or 894 grams of the lighter Chicken with Halibut. That takes the dog's energy need as about 840 kcal daily, from the standard 110 × bodyweight^0.75 sum. Put the same dog against the label's own guide and it asks for 1171 grams a day.