Orygo Adult Dry: Salmon with Blueberries review

All four earn a place in our top two bands, the chicken, the salmon and the turkey Outstanding and the pork Excellent, while the middle of the cold-pressed field lands in Good. Cold pressing scores strongly with us, so a placing of this kind is earned and not a technicality. The size of the fresh meat declaration and the clarity of the named animals do most of the earning. The four finish close together at the top of our scale, so choose on the animal rather than on the order.

Ingredients, as declared: 55% Fresh Salmon, 30% Fresh Chicken, Partially Hydrolysed Starch, 4% Blueberries, Vegetable Glycerin, Orygoformula 2.6% (Products Resulting from Yeast Fermentation, S. Cerevisiae, Turmeric Longa, Olive Oil, Inulin, Chicory Pulp, Sage, Quinoa, Mint, Fennel, Yucca Mojave, Rosemary, Oregano, Thyme, Valerian, Cranberry Extract, Pomegranate Extract, Milk Thistle, Liquorice, Aloe Vera Without Aloin, Extract Artichoke, Prooil, Egg Membrane, Trout Oil 500 mg/kg).

Cold pressing is the method before it is a recipe. Ingredients are pressed into a pellet at a fraction of the temperature used to extrude ordinary kibble. In liquid that pellet crumbles and does not swell. Owners of fast eaters and delicate stomachs keep returning to the format for exactly that reason. It is stored and fed exactly like dry food, and measured out the same way.

The meat bill is the headline. A lead animal takes 55% of every recipe and a second fresh animal takes 30%. In three of the four, that lead animal is itemised as meat, liver and heart, so the organ meat is genuinely in the bowl and not merely implied. Fresh meat carries its own water, so the finished pellet holds less of it than the raw percentage suggests. A declaration on that scale still sits far above what most pressed and extruded foods manage.

Partially hydrolysed starch is the recipe's quiet partner. Hydrolysing a starch breaks it down before it reaches the dog, and that makes the pellet both easier to press and gentler on digestion. Carbohydrate here converts to between 32.9% and 40.2% of dry matter depending on the recipe, under the 43.2% typical for cold-pressed food. What the label stops short of doing is naming the plant it comes from, and for an owner steering around one particular grain that is the entry to ask about.

Orygoformula, at 2.6%, is where everything else lives: yeast fermentation products, turmeric, olive oil, inulin and chicory pulp. A long run of culinary herbs from sage to thyme follows, with extracts of cranberry, pomegranate, milk thistle and artichoke. Trout oil is declared at 500 mg per kilo and egg membrane sits in the same blend, which is why fish and egg cannot be avoided anywhere in this range. At that inclusion the blend is modest, and printing its contents in full is more than many makers do.

The named fruit or vegetable at 4% distinguishes one bag from another almost as much as the meat does: carrot, broccoli, pumpkin or blueberries. Each carries its own printed percentage, with nothing buried in a vegetable blend.

Crude ash converts to between 8.5% and 11.0% of dry matter across the four. That is high for a dry food, and it fits the minerals that arrive with fresh meat. Three of the recipes publish a per-kilo panel: vitamins A, D3 and E, plus iron, zinc, copper, manganese and iodine. The Chicken with Carrot does not print one.

Fresh salmon at 55% with fresh chicken at 30% and blueberries at 4%. Crude ash converts to 11.0% of dry matter, the highest reading of the four, and protein to 31.7%, at 359 kcal per 100g. For a dog that gets on with oily fish this is the obvious pick, as long as chicken is not the thing you are avoiding.

Orygo Adult comes in 3.6kg and 8kg bags.

Working from the standard maintenance estimate, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition wants roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). On the declared energy of these recipes that comes to between 227g a day on the Pork with Broccoli and 237g on the Turkey with Pumpkin.