Pala Chicken & Salmon review

We place this recipe in our Outstanding band, where protein and processing, nutritional balance and value all read Outstanding and transparency reads Excellent. Two named animals carrying the bulk of the composition between them, a percentage against each, and a supporting cast kept deliberately small will always read well for us. The absence of any synthetic supplement panel is a real statement of confidence in the ingredients. Air dried foods are too thin on the ground for us to publish a typical for the format, so nothing here is being measured against a shelf average.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (48%), salmon (37%), carrots, beets, celery, broccoli, kelp, wheat grass, turmeric, salmon oil, parsley, blueberries, cranberries, crushed eggshells, black garlic, black pepper. No additives, synthetic supplements, flavors or preservatives.

The split is the point of this recipe. Chicken at 48% brings the familiar, digestible protein most dogs are raised on. Salmon at 37% brings what a bird cannot, the long chain omega 3 fats that keep skin and coat in order and joints moving. Salmon oil turns up again further down the list, so the fat side is fish led as well as the protein.

Air drying explains the numbers on the panel. Rather than cooking a dough at extrusion heat, the moisture is drawn off gently until the food holds at 12.0%. The analysis reads 42.9% protein and 32.7% fat as fed, converting to 48.8% and 37.2% of dry matter. Very little else is left over, with the carbohydrate estimate reaching only 6.3%.

The plant list is short and purposeful. Carrots, beets, celery and broccoli make up the vegetables. Blueberries and cranberries are the fruit, and kelp brings iodine and trace minerals in from the sea. Turmeric, parsley and black pepper finish it, the pepper traditionally included to help the body make use of the turmeric.

Black garlic deserves a word of its own, because garlic carries a reputation. The trouble with garlic is dose, since large amounts are genuinely a problem for dogs, while small measured inclusions of the aged form are used deliberately for their antioxidant and immune work. Sitting where it does at the tail of the list, this is the measured kind. If you would rather avoid it on principle, the sister recipes in the range give you that option.

Crushed eggshells are the calcium here, the natural route a recipe takes when it will not use a mineral premix, and it is also why no calcium percentage appears on the pack. At 488 kcal per 100g the portions are small and water intake matters more than usual, so keep the bowl topped up and give a switch across a full week to bed in.

£42.95 a kilo, with 100g, 400g and 1kg packs available.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog of moderate build gets through roughly 172 grams a day at about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That puts it at £7.39 a day.