Nutrivet Instinct Atlantic Ten Fish review

Our reading puts this in the Excellent band, a rung up from the Good band where the typical adult dry food comes to rest. The panel does most of that: protein converts to 44.4% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 28.4%, well under the 46.2% an adult dry food usually carries. The label declares 10% moisture, so those conversions rest on a printed figure. What stops it climbing further is a list without a single percentage on it and an energy figure that had to be estimated rather than read off the pack.

Ingredients, as declared: Herring, salmon, cod, sardines, potato, peas, chicken oil and fat, dried mackerel, dried pollack, dried whiting, sea bass, dried sea bream, dried hake, dried chicken, dried whole egg, salmon oil, fish oil, dried pea protein, beet pulp, green beans, lentils, sweet potato, tomato, apple, alfalfa, spinach, chicory root, yeast, fennel leaf, cranberry, pomegranate pulp, blackcurrant jelly dried plasma proteins, poultry hydrolysate, grape seed, potassium chloride, calcium carbonate, fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS), mannan oligosaccharides (MOS), taurine, fucus vesiculosus (bladderwrack) extract ascophyllum nodosum (clubweed) extract, yucca schidigera extract, chondroitin sulphate, N-acetyl-glucosamine, methylsulfonylmethane, mint leaf, L-carnitine tartrate, rosemary extract, green tea extract.

Ten fish is the list itself here, not a flourish on the front of the bag. Herring, salmon, cod and sardines lead in their fresh form, then mackerel, pollack, whiting, sea bream and hake follow in dried form with sea bass among them. The dried entries arrive without their water, so they contribute more to the bag than their place on the list implies. Oily fish of this kind carry their own omega 3, with no need to add it afterwards. The list carries salmon oil and fish oil too.

The name does not mean fish only. Chicken oil and fat sits high on the list, dried chicken and dried whole egg follow, and a poultry hydrolysate appears further down as the palatant. That is worth being clear about. A recipe with this name is exactly the sort a household reaches for when it is trying to keep a dog off birds, and this one will not do that job. As a fish-forward everyday food it is on much firmer ground.

The starch here is potato and peas, followed by lentils, sweet potato and dried pea protein, with beet pulp for fibre. Pea protein is the entry to note, since plant protein counts towards the panel without doing as much for a dog as the fish does. With no percentages printed, there is no way to size its contribution.

The tail is long and mostly familiar. FOS and MOS are prebiotics for the gut, taurine is the heart-associated amino acid, yucca schidigera is the traditional answer to stool odour, and chondroitin sulphate, N-acetyl-glucosamine and methylsulfonylmethane cover the joints between them. Rosemary and green tea extracts are natural antioxidants and mint leaf is a small nod towards breath. Grape seed will stop a careful reader, since grapes themselves are firmly off the menu for dogs. The pressed seed is an antioxidant source, and it is not the part of the fruit that causes the trouble.

One declaration stands out. Iodine is printed at 20 mg per kilo, where the brand's other recipes declare 2 mg. The list also carries bladderwrack and clubweed extracts, seaweeds that bring iodine of their own. It may be a genuine reflection of a fish and seaweed recipe or it may be a decimal point in the wrong place. We report the figure as the label prints it and leave it there.

£6.69 a kilo, sold in 3kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 230 grams a day, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at roughly £1.54 a day. That energy figure is itself an estimate, so judge the portion by your dog's condition and not by the sum.