Specific CGW Senior all breeds review

This one settles into our Good band. The middle of the wet shelf sits a rung higher, in our Excellent band, and the distance comes down to two things a senior recipe accepts on purpose. Protein is held low, which our scoring reads as a thinner analysis even when it is exactly what the diet intends. Maize also takes a large share of a recipe where we would normally expect more meat. Against that, the extras on the label are chosen for the older dog rather than for the front of the pack.

Ingredients, as declared: Pork, maize, fish, fish oil, egg powder, cellulose powder, vitamins and trace elements (including chelated trace elements), dextrose, minerals, sunflower oil, psyllium husk, xylose, taurine, yeast (source of mannan-oligosaccharides and ß-1.3/1.6-glucans), L-carnitine.

Pork leads, and it is the more interesting choice on this label. It appears rarely in mainstream dog food. For a great many dogs it is a genuinely new meat, and it is both palatable and well digested. A dog who has run out of options with chicken, beef and lamb often does well on it.

Maize comes second and does the carbohydrate work. Cooked, it is a perfectly serviceable grain that supplies energy and linoleic acid. It is a cereal all the same, and a household keeping grain out will want to know maize sits this high.

Fish and egg powder join the pork on the protein side. Egg comes close to a perfect protein for a dog, and the fish adds a second animal source, though neither entry is pinned to a species.

The label's real point of difference comes next. Taurine and L-carnitine are named, and a yeast brings mannan-oligosaccharides with beta-glucans. Taurine is the amino acid makers reach for when the heart is the concern. L-carnitine turns fat into energy while lean muscle is held on to. The yeast fraction is a prebiotic that the bacteria of the large intestine feed on. None of the three is dosed in print, so read them as part of the recipe's intent rather than as a measured programme.

Cellulose powder and psyllium husk cover the fibre between them, one insoluble and one soluble, and crude fibre is declared at 1.2%. Even by wet food standards, moisture at 81.0% is high, and the energy figure follows it down to 81 kcal per 100g, well under the 97 typical for adult wet food. There is no standalone additives panel here, so the vitamins, chelated trace elements and minerals appear inline among the ingredients.

£8.65 a kilo, in a 300 g pack sold in sixes.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition calls for about 840 kcal a day, using the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. At 81 kcal per 100g that comes to roughly 1033 grams a day and about £8.94. The label's own chart runs on a similar scale, asking 895 grams a day for a 14 kg dog.