Specific COW-HY Allergen Management Plus review

Ingredients, as declared: Rice, rice protein, hydrolysed salmon protein, fish oil, vitamins and trace elements (including chelated trace elements), minerals, sunflower oil, cellulose powder, psyllium husk, borage oil, dextrose, xylose.

Rice leads and rice protein comes second, so the base of the loaf is rice in two forms. On the whole label, hydrolysed salmon protein is the single protein of animal origin. Hydrolysis has cut it down to fragments an immune system will often not read as salmon. Every diet of this type is built on that mechanism.

Fish oil sits just behind it, so fish appears twice and no second species turns up anywhere. There is no chicken, no beef, no lamb and no dairy in print, and no cereal other than rice. That narrowness is the entire idea of an exclusion diet, and this label holds to it right the way down.

The remaining fats are sunflower oil and borage oil, the fibre is psyllium husk with cellulose powder, and the trace elements are declared as chelated. Dextrose and xylose close the list, both of them sugars, sitting at the end where inclusions are smallest but worth spotting if sugars are something you keep an eye on.

The analysis reads 8.2% protein, 4.5% fat and 1.1% crude fibre, with moisture declared at 66.8% and energy at 132 kcal per 100g. Moisture that low makes for a dense loaf rather than a watery one. That is why the portions look modest for a wet food, at 430 grams a day for a 10kg dog and 720 grams at 20kg. A hydrolysed diet is designed to this pattern on purpose, so the figures are context for a conversation rather than something to weigh up on your own. Whether it belongs in your dog's work-up is your vet's call to make.

It comes in a pack of six, each unit 300 g, at £9.99 a kilo. On an estimated 637 grams a day for a 15kg dog, that works out at around £6.36 a day.