Rocco Diet Care Renal: Beef with Chicken Hearts & Pumpkin review

Two recipes sit under the renal name, one built on beef with chicken hearts and pumpkin, the other on chicken with sweet potato. Neither publishes an itemised ingredient list, so the named items are the whole of what the label gives you and the proportions behind them are not stated.

For anyone excluding a meat that leaves gaps to fill in. The beef recipe names two animals between its beef and its chicken hearts, while the chicken recipe names a single animal with a vegetable alongside. Nothing further is confirmed either way on the label, so it is worth asking the practice or the maker for the full declaration before you choose between them.

Protein is the figure a renal diet is usually built around, and in both tins it sits a long way under what an everyday wet food declares. Bringing it down is the whole purpose of the formulation rather than something absent from it, and the level your dog needs is set at the practice, not read off the tin.

Both panels are printed with doses, not left open: vitamin D3 at 200 IU, biotin at 300mcg, zinc at 25mg, manganese at 1.4mg and iodine at 0.75mg. Vitamin E and copper appear on each as well, though the two labels do not express those last entries identically, and the differences are set out below.

Calcium is declared for both recipes, and both run their moisture high in the usual way of wet food, so the as fed percentages look small until they are put on a dry matter footing. The converted figures for each follow, and the practice that placed your dog on a renal diet is where it gets settled whether they are the right ones for him.

Beef leads this one, with chicken hearts and pumpkin named behind it. Protein is declared at 4.5% as fed, which is 20.5% of dry matter once the 78.0% moisture comes out. Fat at 9.8% converts to 44.5%, so on fat this is the richer of the two. Crude fibre reads 2.8% as fed and 12.7% dry, ash lands at 9.1% and the carbohydrate estimate at 13.2%, with energy at 97 kcal per 100g and calcium at 0.64% of dry matter. Its additive panel is the fuller one, opening with vitamin A at 3000 IU, giving vitamin E by weight at 20mg and dosing copper at 1.25mg.

£3.38 a kilo for the beef recipe, in 400g and 800g tins in packs of 6 and 24, plus 300g pouches in 6, 12 and 24. The chicken recipe is £2.84 a kilo, with a pack of 12 at 800g on top of those.