Wainwright's Adult Cans With Superfoods: Wild Venison review

All three cans land in our Excellent band, the beef a little ahead with the venison and the lamb close behind. Protein and processing reads Excellent across the range, nutritional balance and transparency Outstanding on every can, and value Excellent. Those marks come from a high share of named meat and a list that quantifies nearly everything on it. The typical adult wet food reads Excellent as well, so these cans sit comfortably in the middle of that shelf without streaking away from it. Dropping the cereal is what separates them from the brand's rice-based cans, and it shows in a carbohydrate estimate that sits closer to type.

Ingredients, as declared: Freshly Prepared Wild Venison (67%), Dried Sweet Potato (1% equivalent to 4% sweet potato), Dried Carrot, Minerals, Sunflower Oil (0.5%), Dried Seaweed (0.5%), Dried Peas, Goji Berries (0.05%), Blueberries (0.05%), Yucca Extract (0.02%), Chicory Root (as a source of Prebiotic Fructo-oligosaccharides) (0.02%), Herbs: Dried Rosemary (0.02%), Dried Parsley (0.02%)

Freshly prepared meat leads all three labels: beef at 45% with beef tripe at 21% on one, lamb at 60% on another and wild venison at 67% on the third. Freshly prepared means the meat goes in wet, not dried into a meal, and each label says so plainly. Tripe is worth having on a list. It is a grazing animal's stomach and it digests easily, with plenty of nutrients in it. Usually it is the entry that wins over a reluctant eater.

There is no cereal in any of the three. Dried sweet potato does the starch work, at 1% on the beef and venison and 1.5% on the lamb, printed alongside its fresh equivalent, with dried peas and dried carrot behind it. The carbohydrate estimate reads 20.0% of dry matter across all three against the 15.8% typical of adult wet food, and being taken by difference it also absorbs anything the analysis does not name.

The superfood entries are goji berries and blueberries at 0.05% each. Both are genuinely nutritious fruits, and neither is present in a quantity that will change your dog's week. Read them as the name on the can, not the reason to buy it. That reason is the first line on the list.

The beef and venison cans then add dried seaweed at 0.5%, with yucca extract and chicory root at 0.02% each and rosemary and parsley as their named herbs. The lamb can takes a shorter route. It keeps the rosemary and swaps in mint, and the seaweed and the prebiotic are left out altogether. Sunflower oil at 0.5% is the added fat in all three.

Protein converts to 40.0% of dry matter on the beef and lamb and 36.0% on the venison, with fat at 28.0% and 32.0% respectively. Those are strong figures for wet food. With the trace elements dosed in print as well, from zinc at 24mg down to selenium at 0.04mg per kilo, there is very little on these labels left to take on trust.

Freshly prepared wild venison at 67%, the highest meat share here and a genuinely novel animal for a dog that already knows beef and lamb and poultry. It is the richest of the three, with fat at 32.0% on a dry matter basis, 117 kcal per 100g and protein at 36.0%.

£6.05 a kilo across all three, in 395g cans.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at around £4.54 a day on the beef and lamb and £4.34 on the venison. On about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), that comes to roughly 750 grams and 718 grams respectively. On the maker's own table a 12 to 25kg dog is fed between 395 and 790 grams daily.