Primal Spirit Iberian Complete Dry: Sardine review

Our Outstanding band is where the Iberian Pork and the Salmon settle, with the Sardine a step below in Excellent, and all three finish clear of the Good band the typical cold-pressed food occupies. The meat lead is what lifts it: pork at 70% in one recipe and a pork and fish pairing in the other two, with protein and processing reading Excellent right across the three. Carbohydrate converts to between 32.6% and 32.9% of dry matter across the three, comfortably under the 43.2% usual for the format. The Sardine sits only a band below the other two, so let flavour make the choice.

Ingredients, as declared: 40% Fresh Pork, 30 % Fresh Sardine, Rice (White), Milled Beet, Brewer's Yeast, Turmeric

The name says dry and the pellets behave like dry food in the bowl. The process behind them is cold pressing, with the ingredients compacted under pressure at low heat and never cooked through an extruder. Less heat means less done to the ingredients on the way in. The pellet crumbles on contact with liquid and never expands against the stomach wall.

Pork does the heavy lifting throughout. The Iberian Pork recipe declares 70% fresh Iberian pork with 30% of that specified as ham, and the other two open at 40% fresh pork before their fish arrives. Pork is still a relative stranger in British dog food. For a dog that has met chicken and beef more times than anyone can count, it is a useful protein.

Behind the meat the list runs white rice, milled beet, brewer's yeast and turmeric, and then it stops. White rice treats a dog's gut about as kindly as any everyday cereal does, and it is named outright, not tucked under a cereals heading. Milled beet supplies fibre for stool quality. Brewer's yeast is the quiet star of the recipe. It packs the B vitamins densely and carries a full protein on its own. In a food with no declared premix standing behind it, that is real work.

That short list has a flip side worth stating. These are sold as complete foods, yet no vitamin and mineral panel is published against them. Five named ingredients are all the micronutrition has to stand on. There is no calcium declaration either. We estimate energy ourselves here, with no label figure to go on, landing at 334, 335 and 336 kcal per 100g respectively.

The analyses barely move between recipes. Protein converts to between 34.4% and 34.8% of dry matter and fat to between 20.1% and 20.5%, a steady middleweight build for an adult dog in ordinary work. Carbohydrate lands near a third of dry matter in each one, which for a pressed food carrying rice as its only starch source is a restrained showing.

Sardine at 30% takes the place of salmon behind the same 40% fresh pork, a small oily fish with a strong flavour that tends to win over a dog who needs persuading to eat. It carries the highest estimated energy in the range at 336 kcal per 100g, and protein converting to 34.6% of dry matter.

£3.86 a kilo across all three recipes. Each is bagged at 1kg and 12kg, with a two by 12kg order listed as well.

Picture a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition on roughly 840 kcal a day, the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. Against our estimated energy figures that comes to about 250 to 251 grams, or £0.97 a day, whichever of the three you feed.