VetSpec Healthy Dog Adult Formula: Salmon Formula review

Both recipes come out in our Good band, and so little separates them that the choice is about the animal. Most adult dry food has its middle right there with them. Each earns its place the same way, with a dried meat and a fresh meat of one species opening the list. Protein converts to 31.3% of dry matter in the chicken and 31.9% in the salmon, and estimated carbohydrate reaches 38.0% and 41.2%, both under the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. The chicken version reads a fraction tidier on paper because its meal and its fresh meat are almost identical in weight, while the salmon version carries the simpler allergen picture. Neither label declares its calories, so the energy figures on both are estimates.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon meal (29.1%), potato (27.3%), fresh salmon (21.7%), salmon oil (4.3%), peas (5.0%), whole linseeds, sugar beet pulp, sunflower oil, calcium carbonate, sodium chloride, culinary herbs blend (dried seaweed, chicory extract as source of fructo-oligosaccharides (0.08%), yeast extract as source of mannan-oligosaccharides (0.08%), alfalfa, yucca extract, rosemary, fennel, basil, thyme, oregano, parsley, aniseed)

Both recipes follow one design. A dried meat meal supplies the durable protein, a fresh meat of the same animal sits alongside it, and potato does the binding. Fresh meat is heavy with water, and the oven takes nearly all of that away. The meal is what holds the protein up in the finished kibble, and both versions put one at or very near the top of the list.

Potato binds both, 24.4% of the chicken and 27.3% of the salmon, with peas behind it and sugar beet pulp for fibre. Beet pulp divides opinion, but as a source of both soluble and insoluble fibre in a dry food it earns its keep, and neither recipe contains cereal of any kind.

Whole linseeds run through both, an easy plant source of omega 3 with useful fibre attached. The chicken recipe tops that up with fish oil, which carries long-chain omega 3s a dog can use as they are. The salmon recipe takes them from salmon oil at 4.3% and adds sunflower oil for the omega 6 side.

Prebiotics sit inside the culinary herbs blend at the end of each list. Chicory extract supplies FOS and yeast extract supplies MOS, each at 0.08%, with dried seaweed for iodine and trace minerals. The fennel, oregano and aniseed that follow are flavour, and neither recipe needs them to stand up.

Both labels dose their trace minerals in print. Copper and zinc appear twice over, as a simple salt or oxide and also as an amino acid chelate. A dog absorbs the chelated portion most easily. Selenium arrives as selenised yeast, the organic form. Calcium carbonate is declared as an added calcium source in each recipe without a calcium figure printed anywhere, which is the one number a careful reader may go looking for and will not find.

Salmon meal leads at 29.1%, then fresh salmon at 21.7% and salmon oil at 4.3%. No second animal is present on this list. For a dog kept on fish alone this is the one, and its ash works out at 6.0% of dry matter, the lower of the pair.

The chicken recipe is £8.43 a kilo and the salmon £9.12 a kilo, both sold in 2kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats around 225 grams of the chicken in a day, or 223 grams of the salmon. That assumes around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate) against the estimated calorie figures on each bag. That comes to £1.90 a day on the chicken and £2.03 a day on the salmon. For comparison, the label's low activity column gives 130 to 200 grams to a dog of 11kg to 20kg.