Terra Canis Light: Game & Rabbit with Cucumber and Peach review

This tin reads Excellent on our scoring. This tin sits right on the midpoint of adult wet food, a strong category whose middle lands in our Excellent band, and the reasons are all readable on the label. Protein and processing reads Excellent, with nutritional balance and transparency each reading Outstanding. The one thing this tin exists to do, keeping a dog full on fewer calories, it does better than most of the category.

Ingredients, as declared: game and rabbit 26% (game muscle meat 16%, rabbit meat 10%), broth 26%, cucumber 13%, carrot 13%, tomato 10%, peach 7%, minerals 1%*, psyllium husks*, coconut flour*, pumpkin seed flour*, brewer's yeast*, artichoke leaf*, basil*, dandelion*, rose hip peel*, mineral clay*, rapeseed oil, oyster shell*, spirulina* *dried

Game and rabbit make up 26%, split into game muscle meat at 16% and rabbit meat at 10%. Rabbit is rarely fed and easy to digest. That makes it a genuinely useful meat once the everyday ones have caused trouble. Game is the looser half of that pair, a category that can cover more than one wild species. You get the style of meat, though the animal behind it stays unnamed.

Broth matches the meat at 26%, and the label calls it broth, not added water. No species is tied to it either. Protein still converts to 37.7% of dry matter, a respectable figure that shows the tin has been lightened rather than simply watered down.

The plant side is where the lightness is engineered: cucumber at 13%, carrot at 13%, tomato at 10% and peach at 7%, most of which is water and fibre. Estimated carbohydrate lands at 26.0% of dry matter, above the 15.8% typical of adult wet food. Yet the energy comes out at 67 kcal per 100g against a typical 97, and for a dog on a diet that second figure is the one that counts.

The dried tail is longer than most: psyllium husks and pumpkin seed flour for fibre, with brewer's yeast for natural B vitamins. Then come artichoke leaf, dandelion, rose hip peel and basil as herbs, with mineral clay and spirulina for trace minerals and oyster shell for calcium. Psyllium is a soluble fibre that helps a meal feel more substantial than its calories suggest, which is exactly the trick this recipe is trying to pull off.

The added panel is dosed in print, with vitamin A at 15998 units and vitamin D3 at 320, plus copper, iodine, manganese and zinc each given per kilo.

400g tins at £10.45 a kilo, singly or in packs of six and twelve.

Using 110 × bodyweight^0.75 for maintenance, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 840 kcal a day, and at this tin's energy that is roughly 1256 grams, or about £13.12 a day. The label's own guide sets a dog of 10kg to 20kg at 620 to 980 grams.