Royal Canin Mini Ageing Chunks In Gravy review

Placed against the rest of the wet shelf, where the typical adult food climbs into our Excellent band, this pouch comes in at Average. Wet recipes usually score well because they tend to be meat led and light on starch, and the reason this one does not follow them up is the protein it never names. Nutritional balance comes back Outstanding on the analysis and transparency Good, while protein and processing reads Average. That middle reading turns on one point: no named animal, no named grain, no named plant protein and no percentage attached to any of it.

That is a comment on what the pack shows, not on the dogs eating from it. Royal Canin has spent decades on small breed and senior nutrition and the work behind the formula is substantial. It is simply work that stays behind the label, and a score built on what an owner can verify can only go so far on a list this brief.

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

Vegetable protein extracts is the entry worth pausing on, because it is doing real work. Plant proteins are drawn out of raw material by processes the label does not describe, from sources it does not name, and for a dog they are a less complete package than animal protein is. Placing one this high on the list is a plainer way of lifting a protein figure than adding more meat would be. Soya, maize and wheat are the usual origins, and any of the three could be behind the words here.

Ahead of it, meat and animal derivatives and cereals set the pattern for the whole pack. Both are legal umbrella terms that cover a very wide quality range, from excellent material to unremarkable material. Both also let the maker change source between production runs without altering a single word on the pouch. Derivatives of vegetable origin and oils and fats, further down, work the same way.

The analysis reads sensibly for an older small dog. Protein converts to 40.6% of dry matter and fat to 25.9%, a moderate fat level that is kind to a dog whose activity has dropped away. Crude fibre converts to 4.6% of dry matter, a little above a plain meat recipe, which is what the gravy and the plant entries bring with them.

Every additive carries a printed dose. Vitamin D3 comes in at 180 IU per kilo and vitamin C at 70 mg. The minerals are printed too: iron at 9 mg, iodine at 0.23 mg, copper at 1.8 mg, manganese at 2.8 mg and zinc at 28 mg. Vitamin C at that level is the one entry aimed squarely at an ageing dog. Clinoptilolite at 2 g per kilo is a technological aid working on the texture of the gravy.

Take none of this as a reason to drop a pouch your dog enjoys. It is soft, it smells of dinner, it is portioned for a small mouth and the analysis behind the vague wording is perfectly sound. Just go in knowing that some of the protein on that panel grew in a field, and that the pack will not tell you which field.

£10.59 a kilo, in 85 g pouches sold a dozen at a time.

An estimate for scale: a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 948 grams a day at 89 kcal per 100g. The target there is around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), and that works out at roughly £10.04. The older small dogs this pouch is made for eat a great deal less than that.