Terra Canis Classic: Wild boar with natural rice, fennel and raspberry review

These five tins read Good on our scoring, the horse included. Wet food for adults is a strong field, and its middle is itself an Excellent band food, so a Good reading here describes how a tin is built and sounds no warning. Nutritional balance and transparency read Outstanding on the beef, horse, turkey and wild boar, with the duck a shade behind on balance at Excellent, and protein and processing reads Average right across the five. On the horse the label is the plainest of the five: the meat is given as one 42% figure with no cuts named, and the list around it is shorter than its shelf mates manage. Same thinking, described in less detail.

Ingredients, as declared: Wild boar 47%, broth 22%, courgette 5%, natural rice 5%, fennel 3%, apple 3%, melon 3%, tomato 3%, apricot 3%, rapeseed oil 2%, raspberry 1%, lupin meal 1%, minerals 1%*, thyme*, marjoram*, sage*, savory*, sesame seed*, mineral clay*, brewer's yeast*, oyster shell*, spirulina*, *dried, Ratio Meat : natural rice : vegetables/fruit/herbs : other raw ingredients = 69 % : 5 % : 24 % : 2 %

These tins are put together the way a butcher would think about them. On the beef, heart is 27%, lung 9%, liver 6% and muscle meat 4%, each with its own figure, and the turkey does the same across heart, stomach, liver, muscle meat and skin. Organ meat is the whole idea here, and for nutrition per mouthful heart and liver beat almost anything else a dog can be given.

Broth follows the meat at between 15% and 22% depending on the recipe. Calling it broth on the label is a small honesty that plenty of wet labels skip, and it means the moisture is carrying flavour and some dissolved nutrition. No species is named against it, though, and that only matters when you are shutting out one animal exactly.

The plant side is led by vegetables and fruit rather than starch: carrot, courgette, fennel, celery and beetroot, with apple, pear, apricot, peach and raspberry between them. A named grain then adds a small measured share, printed at between 5% and 7%, whether that is natural rice, millet or amaranth. Naming and measuring the cereal is the opposite of how most wet labels handle theirs.

The finishing list is where the house style shows: dried herbs, rose hip peel, mineral clay, brewer's yeast, oyster shell and spirulina, all at trace level. Brewer's yeast brings natural B vitamins, oyster shell is a calcium source and the herbs are seasoning more than anything else. None of it moves the analysis. Nor is any of it there to make the label look busy.

The added panel stays short and dosed on every tin, with zinc, manganese, copper and iodine printed per kilo and vitamin D3 on every label but the duck. Organ meat at this level brings a great deal of its own vitamin A and B group along with it. That is why so short a panel can be read as a strength.

Wild boar at 47% on a broth at 22%, with the highest meat ratio on any label here at 69%. Protein reaches 45.5% of dry matter, the strongest figure in the range. Lupin meal appears at 1%, worth a note for anyone keeping lupin off the list.

£10.04 a kilo across all five recipes. Tins run 200g, 400g and 800g, with the wild boar in 200g and 400g.

A 15kg adult dog of moderate build needs somewhere near 840 kcal a day on the usual maintenance sum of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. That works out at 798 to 1004 grams according to the recipe, or roughly £8.02 to £10.08 a day. For a dog of 10kg to 20kg the label's own guide says 550 to 900 grams.