Nutriment Adult Gently Steamed: Duck review

Our Excellent band takes all four trays, with too little between their scores to choose on. The animal on the front is the only real decision. Our scoring treats adult wet food as a strong category, and the typical tin reaches that same band. The lead this range holds comes with the category, and it is not one the range made. Protein converts to 37.5% of dry matter on every recipe, and fat runs from 29.2% to 37.5% depending on the animal. Protein and processing reads Excellent, value sits in step with the band, and nutritional balance and transparency are both Outstanding.

Ingredients, as declared: Duck 68% (Duck Heart 7%, Duck Liver 7%), Spinach (1%), Minerals, Dried Carrot (0.6% Equivalent to 7%), Salmon Oil, Chicory (0.01%)

Everything is in that 68%, and it is broken down unusually well. For the beef, kidney and liver are at 4% each, heart at 7% and tripe at 11%. Chicken is heart and liver at 11% each, duck is heart and liver at 7% each, and lamb is lung and tripe at 15% each before liver at 7% and heart at 4%. Very few wet labels itemise organ meat like that.

Much of how the analysis reads comes down to organ meat. Liver appears on all four labels, and there is little a dog can eat that carries more nutrition per mouthful. Kidney joins it on the beef. The tripe on the beef and lamb trays brings its own digestive benefit. A recipe assembled this way needs less propping up from a supplement panel than a muscle meat tray would.

The plant share is small and printed. Pumpkin at 1% appears on three of the four trays, and broccoli and apple are declared in their dried weight with the fresh equivalent alongside. Blueberry sits at 0.5% on the lamb and dried carrot at 0.6% on the duck. Carbohydrate converts to between 12.5% and 20.8% of dry matter across the range, with the typical adult wet food at 15.8%, so the trays sit either side of that mark.

Salmon oil brings the omega 3 on every label, and chicory at 0.01% is there as a prebiotic. Every vitamin and trace element carries a printed dose, down to the selenium. Closing the panel is cassia gum, the thickener that gives a steamed tray its set.

Each tray keeps to one land animal, which is genuinely useful if you are working through proteins to find the one that agrees with your dog. Read it as one land animal rather than one ingredient, though, because the salmon oil means fish is present on all four.

Duck at 68%, with heart and liver at 7% each, and spinach at 1% rather than pumpkin doing the green work. It is the richest tray of the set, with fat converting to 37.5% of dry matter and an energy estimate of 118 kcal per 100g, and the lightest on carbohydrate at an estimated 12.5%.

The beef tray is £6.25 a kilo and the chicken, duck and lamb trays are £5.85 a kilo, all in the same 395g tray.

Put a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition at about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Feeding that dog works out at between £4.15 and £4.84 a day depending on which tray you pick. That comes to roughly 709 to 774 grams a day.