Rosie's Farm Single Meat Wet: Adult Turkey & Rice review

The two turkey recipes reach our Outstanding band and the lamb and the salmon land in our Excellent band, a narrower spread than four labels built to one pattern might have produced. The analysis is what opens the gap. The salmon panel declares the lowest protein of the group at 32.0% of dry matter and by some way the highest fat at 44.0%, where the other three sit between 38.0% and 39.6% protein. Value tracks each recipe's own placing: Excellent on the salmon and the lamb, Outstanding on the two turkeys. Transparency reads Outstanding on every recipe but the salmon.

Wet food is a strong category on our scoring, with the typical adult recipe already in our Excellent band. The salmon's reading here does not describe a bowl to worry about. It describes a recipe that has come out richer and less protein dense than its own stablemates.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey (60%), broth (33%), rice (4%), peas [dried] (0.5%), carrots [dried] (0.5%, equivalent to 4.5% fresh carrots), cranberries [dried] (0.5%), pumpkin [dried] (0.5%), broccoli [dried] (0.5%), salmon oil (0.5%), minerals, yeasts (0.01%) [as a source of prebiotic mannanoligosaccharides], chicory [dried] (0.01%) [as a source of prebiotic fructo-oligosaccharides].

The named animal is 60% of every recipe and it sits at the top of the list where it belongs, with broth at 30% or 33% behind it. That construction holds across all four labels, and it is the reason the range can call itself single meat without stretching the point.

The only starch of any size is the rice at 4%, and everything after it is a garnish: peas, carrots, cranberries, pumpkin and broccoli, each dried and each at 0.5%. The carrots come with a note that the dried 0.5% is the equivalent of 4.5% fresh, which is the sort of working most labels leave you to do yourself. Carbohydrate converts to between 10.0% and 15.4% of dry matter across the range, at or under the 15.8% typical of an adult wet food.

Yeasts and dried chicory close each list at 0.01%, named as sources of prebiotic fibre. At that level they are a nod towards gut health, not a working dose. They are honestly labelled, though, and the thinking is sound: both feed the gut flora in the large intestine.

Salmon oil at 0.5% appears on every label, the lamb and the two turkey recipes included. It is the best source of marine omega 3 a recipe like this can carry, better in that respect than a plant oil. It is also why a single meat recipe is not quite a single animal recipe once you read to the bottom.

The added panel is printed with figures throughout. Vitamin A comes at 2250 IU and vitamin E at 26 IU, then zinc at 24mg, iron at 12.5mg, copper at 2.5mg, manganese at 2mg and iodine at 0.45mg per kilo. Vitamin D3 at 328 IU and selenium at 0.04mg appear on three of the four. The selenium is the sodium selenite form, which is the standard supplement across the industry, and the senior recipe adds L-carnitine at 100mg.

Turkey at 60% on 33% broth, the middle reading of the group with protein at 38.0% of dry matter and fat at 34.0%. Of the two common poultry meats turkey is the leaner, and it is easy on the digestion. That makes this a sensible first move for a dog that has been eating a lot of chicken elsewhere.

£7.26 a kilo on all four recipes, sold in 195 g and 395 g sizes in packs of 6.

As a guide, allow about 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is roughly 645 to 785 grams a day, and between £4.68 and £5.70 a day depending on the recipe. The labels' own guides for a 20kg dog run from 630 to 1145 grams a day.