Terra Canis Marktragout: Chicken with sweet potato and rosemary review

This tin lands in our Outstanding band, a clear band ahead of the middle of adult wet food, and that middle belongs to a strong category. The meat share is the reason: 57% chicken, itemised into three cuts, produces a protein figure of 51.3% of dry matter, which is high for anything served from a tin. Estimated carbohydrate stays at 19.4% of dry matter, close to the 15.8% typical of the category, so the vegetables are seasoning the recipe rather than bulking it out. Every pillar reading comes back Outstanding, and the label hands you enough detail to check each one.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 57% (chicken heart 23%, chicken stomach 23%, chicken muscle meat 11% ), broth 13%, pumpkin 9%, potato 6%, sweet potato 4%, tomato 4%, celery stalks 2%, minerals 2%*, apple, cowberry, rapeseed oil, coconut flake*, brewer's yeast*, rosemary 0.1%*, basil*, Andean salt*, sesame seed*, mineral clay*, oregano*, oyster shell*, spirulina*, *dried

Open the 57% chicken up and the cuts are printed: heart at 23%, stomach at 23% and muscle meat at 11%. Heart and stomach are working cuts. They are dense and highly digestible, and a tin built on them will usually carry more nutrition than one built on trimmed breast meat.

Broth follows at 13%, a low water addition by wet food standards and part of the reason protein converts to 51.3% of dry matter. One loose thread on an otherwise tight list: the broth's animal is never named.

The plant side reads like a market basket: pumpkin at 9%, potato at 6%, sweet potato at 4%, tomato at 4% and celery stalks at 2%, with apple and cowberry for fruit. Sweet potato is the one to have out of that group. It brings more fibre and vitamin A than a plain potato, and it is gentler on blood sugar. No cereal appears anywhere, so the tin is grain free without making a slogan of it.

Rapeseed oil carries the added fat, and the finish is the familiar house signature: coconut flake, brewer's yeast, rosemary at 0.1%, basil, oregano, sesame seed, mineral clay, oyster shell and spirulina. Andean salt is in there too, doing what salt does in any recipe, which is make it taste of something.

The added panel is short and dosed: vitamin A at 4000 units and vitamin D3 at 500, with copper at 2 mg and zinc at 20 mg per kilo, and iodine printed alongside them. With this much organ meat in the tin, a good deal of the vitamin work is already done by the ingredients themselves.

Just the one size here: a 385g tin, bought on its own or six to a pack.

Working from the standard maintenance estimate of 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75), a day's feeding comes to around 1065 grams. Terra Canis is more generous on the pack, asking 650 to 1300 grams a day for a dog of 10kg to 20kg.