Paw-Cura Adult Small Breed review

This food shares a rung with the middle of the adult dry market, both reading Good on our scale, and it arrives there by an unusual route. Protein and processing lands at Average with nutritional balance a step up at Good, the potato, oats and peas filling in behind the protein. Transparency is where it pulls ahead, because a single named protein source, dosed additives and percentages printed where a reader needs them leave very little to guess at.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried insect protein (33%), Dried potato flakes, Naked oats, Green peas, Extra virgin olive oil, Dried brewer's yeast, Dried beet pulp, Flaxseed, Minerals, Dried apples, Dried yeast extract (a natural source of MOS (mannan-oligosaccharides) & beta glucans) (0.5%), Dried carrots, Dried chicory (a natural source of FOS and inulin), Dried chamomile (0.1%), Algae oil, Yucca schidigera.

At 33%, dried insect protein is a substantial share for this young category, and no other animal ingredient appears. Insects convert their feed remarkably efficiently, and they arrive as a protein hardly any dog has encountered before. That is exactly the point of a novel protein: there is nothing for a primed immune system to recognise. Everything else on this list is plant, yeast or mineral.

Dried potato flakes come next, then naked oats and green peas, and dried beet pulp joins them for fibre. Naked oats keep their nutrition without a husk to strip away first. What stands out is where the panel finishes: protein at 29.7% of dry matter, fat at 17.6% and estimated carbohydrate at 37.9%, a long way under the 46.2% adult dry foods usually run. More nutrition from less food is precisely the trade a small stomach wants.

The fats are deliberate and unusual. Extra virgin olive oil brings antioxidants and vitamin E along with its energy. Algae oil at the tail of the list carries omega 3 in its long chain form, the same molecules a fish would otherwise have supplied. The recipe stays free of fish, and the coat still gets the fatty acids it leans on.

The gut and heart extras all carry figures. Dried yeast extract at 0.5% supplies MOS and beta glucans, chicory brings its inulin, chamomile appears at 0.1%, and yucca schidigera is in there for what it does to household odours. Taurine and L-carnitine are both printed with doses beside them. Taurine looks after heart function and carnitine handles fat metabolism, a sensible pair to find on a recipe carrying this much fat.

Calcium comes out at 1.1% of dry matter, comfortably inside the range an adult dog wants. The trace minerals are declared one by one in sulphate form: zinc at 60 mg, iron at 50 mg, copper at 10 mg and manganese at 10 mg per kilo. Iodine sits at 1 mg and selenium at 0.2 mg. Vitamin E at 120 mg matters more than usual on a food this rich, since it is the vitamin that keeps those fats from turning.

£10.18 a kilo, sold in 1.8kg and 5.4kg bags.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 239 grams a day on the standard maintenance estimate of 110 kcal × bodyweight^0.75, roughly 840 kcal, working out at £2.43 a day. Almost every dog on a small breed recipe weighs a fraction of that reference dog, so scale the amount and the daily cost down accordingly.