Vale Pet Foods Complete: Tremendous Turkey review

Our Good band holds both recipes, and a typical adult dry food reads there too. The salmon edges ahead of the turkey, though the analysis leans the other way. Carbohydrate converts to 44.6% of dry matter for the turkey against 46.7% for the salmon and 46.2% for the typical adult dry food, and protein to 28.8% against 28.3%. Neither gap is wide enough to choose on. What earns the band on both is the first thing a reader notices. One named animal is declared as half the recipe, with its fresh, its dried and its stock shares written out on their own lines and not folded into a single number.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey 50% (including Freshly Prepared Turkey 28%, Dried Turkey 20%, Turkey Stock 2%), Sweet Potato (26%), Peas (9%), Potato, Beet Pulp, Linseed, Omega 3 Supplement, Minerals, Cranberry (0.3%),Fructooligosaccharides (FOS, 96 mg/ kg), Mannanoligosaccharides (MOS, 24 mg/kg)

Both recipes headline 50% of their content from one animal, and neither label leaves that 50% as a single lump. On the salmon, freshly prepared salmon and trout come to 36%, with dried salmon at 12% and stock at 2%. On the turkey it is 28% freshly prepared and 20% dried, with stock at 2%. What comes through the oven intact is the dried share, and that makes the turkey's 20% quietly the stronger of the two.

The binding is sweet potato: 24% of the salmon and 26% of the turkey. Peas follow at 9%, with potato behind them. As dog carbohydrates go, sweet potato is a good one, with more fibre and more vitamin A than a common potato. Beet pulp is there for fermentable fibre, the kind that firms up a stool.

Linseed is the omega 3 source you can see. It works in the plant form. Converting that to the skin active fats is slower work for a dog than taking them straight from fish. There is also an entry called simply omega 3 supplement, and because it is not named you cannot tell whether it is marine or plant. For most households that is a footnote. For an owner running a strict trial it is the one line to put to the maker.

The prebiotics come with doses, FOS at 96 mg/kg and MOS at 24 mg/kg, and each recipe adds a token botanical, asparagus at 0.3% in the salmon and cranberry at 0.3% in the turkey. Those are garnish, and printing the percentage is the honest thing to do.

Calcium is declared on both, 1.2% of dry matter for the salmon and 1.52% for the turkey. Anyone rearing a large breed puppy is hunting for exactly that number. Both sit in a sensible range for growth, which is why these bags can genuinely be fed from puppyhood onwards. The trace elements are dosed too, though the salmon's panel is the shorter list of the two.

Turkey fills the 50% on its own, with no second animal named anywhere on the list. For a dog that needs one meat and no surprises, this is the simpler option. It carries the bigger dried meat share at 20%, the lower carbohydrate figure and the fuller trace element panel, with cranberry as its garnish. The unnamed omega 3 supplement is the only entry that leaves a question open.

£6.67 a kilo for both recipes, sold in 2kg, 6kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 229 grams of the salmon a day, or 234 grams of the turkey. Both assume around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), and that comes to £1.53 and £1.56 a day. The label's own guide asks 145 to 240 grams for a dog between 10kg and 20kg. Where your dog belongs in that span is a question for their waistline.