Pala Rabbit, Herring & Salmon review

Everything our scoring rewards is printed on the front of this label. Three animals are named, each carries a percentage against it, and no category term appears anywhere behind them. That puts the recipe in our Outstanding band, where nutritional balance, protein and processing and value all read Outstanding, and transparency reads Excellent. Air-dried food occupies a small and varied corner of the market, with no settled cohort sitting behind it. This band is a reading of the recipe itself rather than a placing against a shelf of rivals.

Ingredients, as declared: Whole Atlantic herring (36%), rabbit (30%), salmon (16%), egg yolk, banana, carrots, celery, beets, spinach, butternut squash, sea buckthorn, cranberries, blueberries, Icelandic kelp, wheatgrass, turmeric, sea salt, black pepper.

Drying is what makes these percentages count. The water comes out gently and no extrusion heat bakes it away, so the 36% herring, 30% rabbit and 16% salmon describe dried animal, not fresh weight that later disappears. The analysis follows suit, protein reading 50.0% as fed and 55.6% once the remaining moisture is taken out of the sum.

Whole herring means the whole fish, with its bone and its organs included. A good deal of a fish's mineral content lives in exactly those parts. Rabbit is the interesting entry for an owner with a reactive dog. So few recipes use it that plenty of dogs have never eaten rabbit at all, and nothing a dog has never met can be something it has learned to react to. Salmon rounds the trio out and brings the oilier fatty acids that leaner meats cannot.

Behind the animals the list reads like a greengrocer's shelf: banana, carrots, celery, beets, spinach and butternut squash, then sea buckthorn, cranberries and blueberries in smaller amounts. Icelandic kelp does quiet work as a mineral and iodine source, and wheatgrass, despite the name it carries, holds none of the gluten a wheat sensitive dog reacts to. Sea salt closes the list with turmeric and black pepper, all of it seasoning and not substance.

The analysis is rich and it deserves respect at the bowl. Fat comes in at 24.4% as fed and 27.1% of dry matter, the estimated carbohydrate stays down at 6.9% of dry matter, and each 100g holds 445 kcal. That is a great deal of dinner in a small pile, so a dog moving across from kibble will be eating a visibly smaller portion for the same energy.

One thing this label does not carry is a printed vitamin and mineral panel, so there are no dosed figures to read off the back. The micronutrition rides on the ingredients themselves, kelp included, which is a fair approach on a recipe this animal heavy, though it does mean trusting the food with no number to check.

£42.95 a kilo, sold in 100g, 400g and 1kg packs.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works through about 189 grams a day, based on roughly 840 kcal a day from the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. That comes to £8.11 a day. Pala's own chart is lighter for the same dog, feeding 156 grams.