Salubrious Healthy Dog Food Cold-Pressed With Grains: Chicken review

Both recipes come out in our Good band, the same one cold-pressed food typically holds. They are close together, so the choice between beef and chicken is your dog's to make.

The arithmetic is plain enough. Protein converts to 25.6% of dry matter in each of them, and carbohydrate to just under half the food: 49.7% for the beef, 50.0% for the chicken, against 43.2% across cold-pressed food generally. Cereals are a more ordinary way to fill a pellet than the roots the rest of the Salubrious range reaches for, and our protein and processing reading follows that. Value reads Outstanding on both and transparency Outstanding on the beef, Excellent on the chicken. Nutritional balance stays Average and protein and processing reaches Good on the beef, so this is a plain, workmanlike pair rather than a showy one.

Ingredients, as declared: chicken (36%), wheat, barley, peas, linseed, cane molasses, beet pulp, chicken oil, chicken gravy, vitamins and minerals, lucerne, prebiotic (inulin), herbs (parsley, chicory, kelp, peppermint, basil, fennel, thyme, aniseed, yucca and rosemary), glucosamine (0.1%), chordroitin sulphate (0.05%).

Cold pressing does something particular with cereals. The mix is compressed into a pellet at low temperature, without the high heat that biscuit style kibble goes through. The pellet then breaks down in water and does not expand. That is the reason the format is so often suggested for dogs that eat at speed.

The meat comes first and it is properly named: beef at 37% in one recipe, chicken at 36% in the other. Each carries a matching fat, beef tallow in the first and chicken oil in the second. There is no salmon protein and no fish oil on either list. That is unusual for this brand, and genuinely useful if your dog has to avoid fish.

Wheat is the ingredient to think about. It binds a pellet beautifully and most dogs eat it happily for a lifetime. It is also the cereal named most often when intolerance shows up in a dog, and the gluten in it is the reason. Salubrious deserves credit for printing it plainly when cereals would have left you guessing. Barley behind it is a gentler grain that cooks down easily and brings fibre and trace minerals, though it is another gluten source, and peas add fibre with a useful amount of plant protein.

Linseed is the quiet highlight of both lists. It supplies plant omega 3 fats, with fibre and natural antioxidants alongside. It earns its place ahead of the beet pulp that follows it. Lucerne and inulin add more fibre, and the named herbs include kelp, a natural source of iodine and other minerals, plus peppermint, fennel and rosemary at the seasoning end of the scale.

The two labels declare their micronutrition very differently. The beef prints vitamin A, vitamin D3 and vitamin E, while the chicken adds a full set of trace element doses covering iodine, iron, copper, zinc, manganese and selenium. Both finish with glucosamine at 0.1% and chondroitin sulphate at 0.05%, a modest joint gesture that is at least quantified.

No animal but chicken appears on this list, and at 36% it leads, with chicken oil and chicken gravy carrying the fat and the flavour. That makes it the more useful of the pair for a dog kept to one meat. Its additives panel is the fuller of the two, printing trace element doses down to selenium, while ash sits slightly lower at 9.4% of dry matter and carbohydrate at 50.0%. No calcium content is printed.

Both recipes are £3.33 a kilo, sold as a 12 kg bag, a 3 kg bag or a sample bag of roughly 250 g.

Take a 15 kg adult dog in moderate condition at about 840 kcal a day, on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75). That is roughly 261 g of the beef or 260 g of the chicken, and £0.87 a day on either. The maker's own chart is more generous, putting a 15 kg dog on 309 g.