Optimum Pet Health Sensitive Adult review

Our reading places this in the Good band, and it sits above the middle of the adult dry market, which shares that band. Sticking to one animal is what earns the step up. Protein and processing reads Good, a step up from Average, and transparency reads Outstanding because the salmon share is printed with its fresh and dried split. Nutritional balance reads Average, and that is the potato and the pea speaking, not the fish.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon (Of Which Fresh Salmon 25% And Dried Salmon 20%) (45%), Dried Potato Flakes, Dried Sweet Potatoes, Green Peas, Canola Oil (5%), Salmon Gravy (3%), Dried Beet Pulp, Linseed, Minerals, Dried Brewers Yeast, Dried Chicory (A Natural Source Of Fos And Inulin) (1%), Yeast Cell Wall (A Natural Source Of Mos And Beta Glucans) (1%), Gos (Galacto Oligosaccharides) (1%), Dried Curcuma Longa, Yucca Schidigera, Dried Melissa Officinalis, Dried Thymus Vulgaris, Dried Fenugreek, Olive Powder, Dried Rosehip, Tyndaillized Lactobacillus Helveticus

Salmon is declared at 45%, of which 25% is fresh and 20% is dried. Fresh fish is mostly water before it is cooked. The dried fifth of the recipe is where much of the finished protein comes from, and that protein converts to 27.5% of dry matter. Salmon gravy at 3% tops that up with more of the same fish.

The exclusion case rests on the whole list, not just the headline. Salmon is the only animal from top to bottom, the gravy is salmon, and where the brand's other recipes use chicken fat this one uses rapeseed oil, declared as canola oil, at 5%. Nothing is hydrolysed and nothing hides behind a family name like animal fat or meat derivatives, which is what keeps a single-protein claim standing up.

The starch is dried potato flakes ahead of dried sweet potatoes and green peas, with dried beet pulp for fibre. There is no cereal anywhere. Carbohydrate is estimated at 45.0% of dry matter, near enough the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. The plant side does more work here than the fish content might suggest.

Oily fish brings its own omega 3s along with it, which is half the reason salmon turns up on so many skin and coat recipes. Behind it, linseed covers the plant form. There is no separate fish oil line here, so the marine omegas arrive inside the salmon itself.

The digestive work is properly itemised. Dried chicory at 1% is in for FOS and inulin. Yeast cell wall at 1% handles MOS and beta glucans. Galacto-oligosaccharides get their own 1% line, and a tyndallized Lactobacillus finishes the ingredients, a heat-treated culture that works without needing to survive the bag. Thyme, lemon balm, turmeric, fenugreek, yucca, olive powder and rosehip round the label off at trace level.

The added trace minerals here are plain sulphates and calcium iodate, not the chelate pairings used on some of the brand's other bags. Each is dosed in print: iron at 100 mg, zinc at 60 mg, manganese at 8 mg, copper at 5.0 mg and iodine at 1.5 mg per kilo. Taurine has a printed dose of its own, and the antioxidant vitamins are generous, with vitamin E at 450 mg and vitamin C at 100 mg.

£3.47 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 15kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat around 234 grams a day, worked out from about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That puts the figure at £0.81 a day. Portion by condition rather than by habit, particularly if you are running a trial and want the variables held still.