Wainwright's Adult Pouches: Chicken with Brown Rice review

Our Good band takes all three pouches, and none of them separates from the others. That leaves them one tier under the Excellent band where the typical adult wet food lands. The gap is arithmetic, not a reason to be wary. At 45% the meat share is modest for wet food, cooked brown rice at 10% is the largest entry after the meat, and the carbohydrate estimate lands above what a wet recipe usually returns. Nutritional balance reads Outstanding on the chicken and the tuna and Excellent on the lamb. Protein and processing comes back Average across the range, while all three read Outstanding for transparency. This is a plainly built pouch that gives up some ground to richer recipes and is honest about it on the label.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (45%), Cooked Wholegrain Brown Rice (10%), Dried Peas (4%), Carrots (4%), Minerals, Olive Oil (0.3%), Seaweed Extract (0.2%), Chicory Extract (as a source of Prebiotic Fructooligosaccharides) (0.1%), Yucca Extract (0.05%), Blueberry Powder, Cranberry Extract, Pomegranate Extract

The three pouches are one recipe with the animal swapped: chicken, lamb or tuna at 45%, cooked wholegrain brown rice at 10%, then dried peas and carrots at 4% each. Each label keeps to its single named animal, with no derivatives and no second meat behind it. That is what makes moving between the three so straightforward for a dog that needs its protein kept simple.

Cooked brown rice at 10% is the largest entry after the meat, and the label is at least clear that it is counted cooked rather than dry. Rice is gentle on most digestions. It is also why carbohydrate converts to between 23.4% and 25.9% of dry matter here against a typical 15.8% for adult wet food. That figure is taken by difference, so it carries everything the analysis does not separately name.

Olive oil is a better choice of added fat than most pouches bother with, rich in vitamin E and kind to a coat. The tuna recipe adds sunflower oil at 1.7% on top of it, which is what a very lean fish needs to bring its fat to a sensible level. Seaweed extract at 0.2% follows, then chicory extract at 0.1% for the prebiotic side and yucca extract at 0.05%.

The last three entries, blueberry powder, cranberry extract and pomegranate extract, carry no figures at all. Sitting where they do, they will be present in very small amounts. They do no harm and they are not the reason to choose the pouch.

The analyses diverge in one place worth noticing. On a dry matter basis the tuna pouch reads 55.3% protein and 12.8% fat, where the chicken reads 36.4% and 29.5% and the lamb 32.6% and 32.6%. That makes tuna the lean, high-protein option of the three and the lamb the richest, so there is more real choice here than the shared recipe suggests. All three print their added panel with doses, and zinc reaches 30.9mg per kilo on the chicken.

Chicken at 45%, the pouch sold in boxes as well as singly, and the one whose trace element panel runs slightly higher, with zinc at 30.9mg per kilo. Its analysis sits between the other two, 36.4% protein and 29.5% fat on a dry matter basis, which makes it the middle option in every sense.

£5.79 a kilo for the chicken in the box of 32, £6.08 a kilo in the box of 16 and £6.60 a kilo for a single 150g pouch. That last figure is also the one carried by the lamb and the tuna.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at between £4.78 and £6.15 a day depending on the recipe. On about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), that comes to roughly 825 to 931 grams. The label's guide for a 12 to 25kg dog runs from 600 to 1050 grams a day.