Royal Canin Yorkshire Terrier Loaf review

This loaf sits in our Average band, well below the Excellent band the typical adult wet food reaches. Nothing in the analysis explains the drop on its own. Protein converts to 38.6% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 16.8%, and the estimated energy of 94 kcal per 100g is exactly what you would expect from a wet food. Protein and processing and transparency each stop at Average, because scoring can only reward what it can see, and five category terms plus a mineral entry give it almost nothing. Nutritional balance, read from the declared analysis, is the one that comes back Outstanding. Choosing this loaf means buying Royal Canin's judgement about what a very small dog needs, which is a judgement plenty of owners are content to trust.

Ingredients, as declared: meat and animal derivatives, derivatives of vegetable origin, cereals, minerals, oils and fats, various sugars.

Meat and animal derivatives comes first, a category and not an ingredient. European law lets it cover the fleshy parts and processing by-products of any warm-blooded land animal, so a recipe can move between species and cuts without the label changing a word. Nothing about the term implies poor material, and imported and secretive recipes both use it, but it does mean the animal content here is unreadable from the outside.

Derivatives of vegetable origin and cereals follow, one covering refined plant fractions and the other any grain at all. Estimated carbohydrate reaches 16.8% of dry matter against the 15.8% typical of adult wet food. By starch content this is an ordinary wet recipe, whatever the words above it suggest. Oils and fats and various sugars complete the list, the first supplying the 6.0% fat without naming its origin and the second added for taste with no level given.

Clinoptilolite at 2.2 g per kilo is the one entry that stands out. It is a naturally occurring volcanic mineral used in pet food as a technological additive, working on the texture and stability of the loaf rather than feeding your dog anything. Technological additives are often left off entirely, so its appearing here counts as a small point in the label's favour.

The nutritional panel is short, and each entry on it has a figure beside it. Vitamin D3 is at 190 IU per kilo, iron at 9 mg, iodine at 0.3 mg, copper at 2.2 mg, manganese at 2.7 mg and zinc at 27 mg. Crude ash reads 2.2% as fed and converts to 10.0% of dry matter. The mineral content is a real part of the recipe.

Sold twelve 85g servings to a pack, at £10.24 a kilo.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would get through around 896 grams a day, working from about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to about £9.18. A Yorkshire Terrier is a fraction of that weight, so the real daily figure for the dog on the packet is much smaller.