Royal Canin Medium Adult Chunks In Gravy review

Our Average band here is a verdict on the label rather than on the gravy, with transparency reading Average alongside protein and processing and value, while nutritional balance comes back Outstanding. Almost every substantial entry is a legal category, which leaves our scoring with very little it can actually check. The figures that can be checked hold: protein converts to 39.5% of dry matter, fat to 28.4%, and the carbohydrate estimate settles at 18.5%. That is near enough the 15.8% usual for adult wet food that the unnamed cereals are clearly not running the show. A wet food that reaches our Excellent band has generally earned it by printing what it uses, and that is the single move this pouch declines to make. Nothing here should unsettle an owner whose dog is doing well on it.

Ingredients, as declared: meat and animal derivatives, cereals, oils and fats, derivatives of vegetable origin, vegetable protein extracts, minerals, yeasts.

Five of the seven entries are legal headings, and a heading is not a description. Meat and animal derivatives can be flesh and processed carcass material from any warm blooded land animal, and cereals can be any grain. Oils and fats can be fat of any origin, and derivatives of vegetable origin covers almost anything a plant can be worked into. Each is free to be filled differently from one run to the next while the printed pouch stays identical.

Vegetable protein extracts is the entry to understand. It raises the protein figure using material drawn from plants, without naming the plant or the process, which means the 39.5% of dry matter that protein converts to is not all of animal origin. For most dogs that is a technicality, though it matters to anyone trying to keep soya or wheat out of the bowl.

Oils and fats sits third, high up the list, which is the mechanical reason fat lands at 5.4% as fed and converts to a generous 28.4% of dry matter. That richness is the pouch's real selling point for a dog that struggles to hold condition, and it is also why the servings on the back are not enormous.

Yeasts close the list, bringing B vitamins, the cell wall fibres often used as a prebiotic and a savoury taste that helps a picky dog commit to the bowl. Fibre overall converts to 4.7% of dry matter and ash to 8.9%. The ash figure follows from minerals appearing on the list as an ingredient of their own.

The added panel is dosed line by line. Vitamin E is at 140 mg per kilo, vitamin C at 30 mg and vitamin D3 at 160 IU. Zinc is at 28 mg, iron at 9 mg, manganese at 2.8 mg, copper at 1.8 mg and iodine at 0.22 mg. At 2 g per kilo, clinoptilolite of sedimentary origin holds the mix together. Set beside the six weight rows on the feeding table, that panel makes the back of the pouch considerably more informative than the front.

The pouches are 140 g, ten to a box, at £8.36 a kilo.

As a guide, a 15 kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat roughly 995 grams a day, which comes to about £8.32. The basis for that is around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate) and our estimated energy figure. The pouch's own table is close to that, asking 834 grams a day at 14 kg, 1112 grams at 20 kg and 1251 grams at 25 kg.