Optimum Pet Health Senior Cans review

The adult wet shelf scores well with us, and its middle already reaches our Excellent band. These cans clear that middle and settle a little above it. The reasons are plain on the label: one named meat doing the work, no cereal to dilute it, and extras that are named and given a figure rather than implied. Nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding, and protein and processing sits at Excellent with value. The picture is a food that does everything solidly without one standout.

Ingredients, as declared: 68604back.jpg (68604_02, 12x395g sleeve)): Chicken (60%), minerals, dried Antarctic krill (1%) (a natural source of DHA), hydrolyzed Collagen (0.1%), dried Curcuma longa (turmeric) (0.1%), glucosamine hydrochloride (0.03%), Yucca schidigera, MSM (methylsulfonylmethane) (0.02%), chondroitin sulphate (0.01%), dried Melissa officinalis (0.01%), dried Thymus vulgaris, dried fenugreek, olive powder, dried rosehip (0.005%), tyndallized Lactobacillus helveticus (0.001%).

Chicken at 60% opens the list and nothing else on it is a meat. Once the moisture is taken out, protein converts to 43.2% of dry matter and fat to 29.5%, a properly meat led reading for a wet food. The estimated carbohydrate lands at 11.4% of dry matter, below the 15.8% typical of adult wet food. No cereal on the list is pushing it higher.

The entry that catches the eye is dried Antarctic krill at 1%. It is there as a source of DHA, one of the long chain omega 3 fats. It is also what brings fish into the allergen picture for a recipe that otherwise names only chicken.

The joint group comes with figures beside it: glucosamine hydrochloride at 0.03%, MSM at 0.02% and chondroitin sulphate at 0.01%, with hydrolysed collagen at 0.1% alongside. Those are supporting levels rather than a therapeutic programme, so they read as a helpful part of dinner and not as a stand in for anything a vet has prescribed.

Behind them runs a short herbal tail: turmeric at 0.1%, yucca, lemon balm at 0.01%, thyme, fenugreek, olive powder and rosehip at 0.005%, finishing with a tyndallised Lactobacillus helveticus at 0.001%. It all sits at trace level, and not one of those entries is why you would buy the can. The chicken is.

Minerals get a single entry and no breakdown, and that is where this label stops talking. Everything else on it carries either a percentage or a plain name.

£4.22 a kilo, in 395g cans sold twelve to a multipack.

As a guide, feeding works out at around £3.54 a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). At the declared 100 kcal per 100g that comes to roughly 840 grams a day, a little over two cans.