Rocco Diet Care Gastrointestinal: Chicken with Parsnip review

Both recipes go by their headline pairing, chicken with parsnip and turkey with pumpkin, and neither publishes an ingredient list. What you can read is the analysis, and on a food built for a settled gut that is where most of the thinking shows anyway. If your dog has a known trigger, the list is the thing to ask Rocco for before you order.

Fat is the figure to look at first. Both declare 3.4% as fed, converting to 17.9% of dry matter. A fat level held down that far is the familiar shape of a food sold for digestive upset, not an economy in the recipe.

Moisture is 81.0% in both, so these sit at the watery end of the wet foods, and energy lands at 81 kcal per 100g for the chicken and 80 for the turkey. Not much energy in a lot of water means large daily portions, which is worth knowing before you order a small pack to try.

Crude fibre is printed at 0.4%, or 2.1% of dry matter, on each of them, so neither is leaning on a big added fibre component. Where the two separate is protein and starch, and those figures are set out under each recipe.

The added nutrients match across the pair: vitamin D3 at 200 IU, vitamin E at 20 mg and biotin at 300 micrograms. The panel then runs zinc sulphate monohydrate at 25 mg, manganese sulphate monohydrate at 1.4 mg, copper sulphate pentahydrate at 1 mg and calcium iodate at 0.75 mg.

None of that tells you which of the two, or whether either, should be in front of your dog while its gut settles. That choice sits with the vet who has examined your dog.

The chicken recipe is the starchier of the two. Protein is 8.5% as fed and 44.7% of dry matter, with the carbohydrate estimate at 4.7% and 24.8% dry, so roughly a quarter of what remains once the water goes is carbohydrate. Ash reads 2.0%, or 10.5% of dry matter, and energy is 81 kcal per 100g. Of the pair, only this one comes in a pouch as well as a tin.

The chicken recipe is £3.38 a kilo and the turkey £2.84. On the daily amounts a 15kg dog would need at these energy levels, 1037 grams of the chicken and 1050 of the turkey, those work out at roughly £3.51 and £2.98 a day. Both are sold as 400g and 800g tins, the 400g in packs of 6 and 24, the 800g in 6 or 24 on the chicken and 12 or 24 on the turkey. Only the chicken has a 300g pouch, in packs of 6, 12 and 24.