Scrumbles Complete Sensitive Wet Dog Food: Chicken review

The chicken and the duck finish in our Excellent band a whisker apart, with the turkey a step above them in Outstanding. Every one of them is well made, so the choice comes down to the animal that suits your dog. The midpoint of the wet category is an Excellent as well, since wet food scores strongly, so this range is holding a good line in good company.

Nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding, with protein and processing at Excellent. Value tracks the recipe: Excellent for the chicken and duck, Outstanding for the turkey. The meat share and the very short lists are what earn those readings, and there is little on these labels beyond the ingredients themselves.

Ingredients, as declared: 65% Chicken, 4% Carrots, 2% Green Beans, Minerals, Slippery Elm 0.1% (Prebiotic), 117kCal/100g

Sixty five per cent of every recipe is the named animal, and there is no second animal anywhere behind it. Protein converts to between 38.0% and 46.8% of dry matter and the carbohydrate estimate never climbs above 8.4%, comfortably under the 15.8% the typical adult wet food runs at.

What is missing here is the whole point. No meat and animal derivatives, no unnamed oils, no hydrolysates, no fish oil, which means a chicken tray really is chicken and a duck tray really is duck. For a dog being walked methodically through the animals one at a time, that is the difference between a useful food and a nearly useful one.

Slippery elm at 0.1% is the functional entry that gives the range its name. It is a mucilage, a plant fibre that turns gel-like in water, and it has a long history of being used to coat and settle an irritated gut. At this level it is a supporting act rather than a treatment, but it is a thoughtful one.

The vegetables and fruit are small and specific. Carrots sit at 4% in all three, green beans at 2% on the chicken, dried apples at 0.5% on the duck and dried cranberries at 2% on the turkey. Only the turkey adds an oil, and it is sunflower, so the extra fat arrives without bringing another animal into the recipe.

The added panel is short but well chosen. Vitamin D3, vitamin E and biotin cover the vitamins. Zinc, manganese, copper and iodine are all supplied as glycine chelates, a form a dog absorbs more readily than the sulphates most wet foods reach for. Calcium converts to between 0.96% and 1.62% of dry matter across the three. That is comfortable for a grown dog, and on the duck and the turkey it also meets what a large breed puppy needs.

Chicken at 65%, plus 4% carrots and 2% green beans. It is the highest in protein of the three at 46.8% of dry matter and the most moderate on fat at 34.0%, which makes it the steady everyday choice. At 117 kcal per 100g, nothing in the set is lighter.

£7.43 a kilo, in 150g servings sold in packs of 12, 36 and 48.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at between £4.62 and £5.33 a day depending on the recipe. That assumes around 840 kcal a day, from the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. That is roughly 622 to 718 grams a day.