Symply Senior Feast Trays review

Excellent is where this tray finishes, and the middle of the adult wet category finishes there too. An older dog fed on this is eating something squarely among the better wet dinners, not a softened-down version of one. Nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding, with protein and processing and value reading Excellent behind them. What gets it there is the lamb share and the restraint of everything around it. Carbohydrate converts to 15.5% of dry matter against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food, so the rice is not carrying an unusual load. Nothing about this tray is trying to be clever, and the placement reflects a plain recipe done properly.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb (70%), Brown Rice (6%), Peas (3%), Carrots (1%), Minerals, Salmon Oil (0.5%), Seaweed (0.12%), Prebiotic - Fructooligosaccharide, Chondroitin (100mg/kg), Glucosamine (100mg/kg), Yucca Extract.

Lamb at 70% is the whole idea, and no other meat appears. Most dogs digest lamb easily and take to it happily, and at that share there is not a great deal of room left for anything else.

Brown rice at 6% is the whole of the cereal, with peas at 3% and carrots at 1% beside it. Once the moisture comes out, carbohydrate converts to 15.5% of dry matter, near enough what the typical adult wet food carries at 15.8%. The rice is there for gentle and familiar carbohydrate, nothing more.

Protein converts to 42.3% of dry matter and fat to 26.9%, a solid and unfussy analysis for an older dog. There is enough protein to hold muscle on, and not so much fat that a dog slowing down starts to carry it.

Glucosamine and chondroitin are printed at 100mg/kg each. That is a maintenance dose and a sensible part of an older dog's daily routine, and if your vet already has something stronger in place this sits underneath it rather than in its way.

Salmon oil at 0.5% brings the omega-3, seaweed at 0.12% brings iodine and trace minerals, and fructo-oligosaccharide is the prebiotic. The added panel is short with a dose beside every entry and the trace elements supplied as chelates. Yucca extract closes the list, where its usual job is making the garden a more agreeable place.

£7.57 a kilo, in 395 g trays sold on their own or seven at a time.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at around £5.68 a day, or roughly 750 grams, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is close to two trays, and the energy figure behind it is our estimate rather than a declared one.