Pets at Home Complete Nutrition Pate: With Lamb review

This is the meatiest construction among the maker's wet foods, and it still comes out in our Average band while the typical adult wet food reaches Excellent. The pillars explain why. Nutritional balance reads Outstanding, helped by a 60% animal block and dry matter figures of 47.4% protein and 26.3% fat. Carbohydrate is estimated at 13.2% against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food.

Protein and processing only reaches Average, because 4% is all that is named and both the fats and the sugars are left as categories. A food can be built well and described badly, and that is what is happening here. If your dog does well on it, the analysis gives you every reason to carry on.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (60% including 4% Lamb), Minerals, Oils and Fats, Various Sugars, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin.

Sixty per cent is the number to notice. Meat and animal derivatives is declared at that level, with 4% named as lamb or chicken. A block that size is what separates this from the maker's tins, where the same entry sits at around a third. The term itself is still an umbrella, taking in the fleshy parts and processing products of any warm blooded land animal, so the balance is not something you can pin down.

Oils and fats follows the minerals, and it is the entry a strict avoidance plan should stop at. The term covers any oil or fat from any plant or animal, which means fish oil is a live possibility on a label that never mentions fish. Most dogs will not care either way, and the fat is part of why a pate eats so well. If you are excluding one animal precisely, though, this entry leaves the door open.

Various sugars sits fourth and is there for palatability, with no source given. Derivatives of vegetable origin closes the list, another umbrella term and, being last, present in small quantity.

The analysis is where this food makes its case. Protein reads 9.0% as fed and converts to 47.4% of dry matter, with fat at 5.0% and 26.3%. Estimated carbohydrate is only 2.5% as fed, or 13.2% of dry matter, under the 15.8% typical for adult wet food. Energy is 82 kcal per 100g, so portions still run large as they do with any wet food. The added panel is short and dosed, with vitamin D3 at 140 IU, vitamin E at 30 mg and zinc, manganese, copper and iodine each printed per kilo. Calcium on the variety case converts to 1.58% of dry matter.

A single 300g pack naming lamb at 4%. Of the two, lamb turns up less often on the dog food shelf, so it is a reasonable thing to try with a dog that has eaten plenty of chicken. The unnamed derivatives and the unnamed fats do mean it cannot be treated as a lamb only recipe.

£2.61 a kilo in the 150g size, sold as a case of 12, and £1.97 a kilo in the 300g size.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 1024 grams a day of the variety packs, or 1014 grams of the singles. It assumes around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at roughly £2.67 a day on the case and £2.00 a day on the 300g packs.