Rocco Senior: Poultry & Oat Flakes review

We have held this range without a score, and the reason is that we cannot read all of it. Two of the four labels publish their recipes in full, and two publish nothing beyond the guaranteed analysis. Grading part of a range and leaving the rest blank would give a misleading picture of a set of foods clearly meant to sit together on the same shelf. So we have described all four and left the grading alone. Nothing here suggests a problem with the food. It is a question of what the maker chooses to print, and the two published recipes are short, meat led and easy to follow.

Ingredients, as declared: 65% Poultry (Heart, Meat, Liver, Gizzards, Neck), 28.8% Stock, 5% Oats, 1% Minerals, 0.2% Safflower Oil.

Lamb & Millet is the plainest recipe of the four, and one of the plainest wet labels you will read anywhere. It runs 65% lamb broken down to heart, meat, liver and tripe, then 28.8% stock, 5% millet, 1% minerals and 0.2% safflower oil, and that is the entire list. Millet is a gentle, easily digested grain that happens to be free of gluten, which makes it a sensible single carbohydrate for an older dog.

Poultry & Oat Flakes runs on the same construction with the animal swapped: 65% poultry as heart, meat, liver, gizzards and neck, then 28.8% stock, 5% oats, 1% minerals and 0.2% safflower oil. Oats bring a little more fibre than millet does. The one caveat is the word poultry itself. It names a category, not a species, and can mean any domestic bird, so a dog that reacts to one bird in particular is not covered by a label written that way.

Beef with Potatoes and Chicken with Potatoes are the two blanks. Their analyses are published in full and read well, with protein converting to 42.4% and 51.0% of dry matter and the estimated carbohydrate to 10.4% and 8.5%. What is missing underneath is the ingredient list and any percentage for the animal. Given how openly the other half of the range is written, that is a curious omission rather than a suspicious one.

Calcium converts to between 1.0% and 1.2% of dry matter across all four. An adult or older dog sits comfortably there, well short of the loading a growing large breed would need. Ash sits between 9.2% and 12.5% of dry matter, which is consistent with organ meat and a mineral premix rather than anything unusual.

The added vitamins and trace elements are identical on every label, and each one carries a dose. That is vitamin D3 at 200 IU, vitamin E at 30mg, biotin at 300mcg, zinc at 15mg, manganese at 3mg and iodine at 0.75mg. There is nothing here aimed specifically at an ageing joint, so if that is what you are after it will need to come from elsewhere in your dog's routine.

Poultry at 65%, taken down to heart, meat, liver, gizzards and neck, with oats as the grain at 5%. It is the leanest recipe here at 24.0% fat on a dry matter basis and 88 kcal per 100g, and the highest in protein at 52.0% of dry matter. That suits an older dog that needs the protein without the richness.

All four recipes are £2.86 a kilo, in 400g and 800g tins.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition means about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The daily figures then run from £1.88 on Beef with Potatoes, at roughly 656 grams, to £2.73 on Poultry & Oat Flakes, at roughly 955 grams. Lamb & Millet comes to £1.97 for about 689 grams and Chicken with Potatoes to £2.61 for about 913 grams.