Wainwright's Grain Free Adult Dry Food: Lamb with Vegetables review

Both recipes come out in our Good band. So does the middle of the adult dry shelf, which tells you this is a food that plays it straight rather than one that reaches.

The plant side explains most of it. Sweet potato, potato flake and peas do a great deal of the carrying. The lamb converts to 47.9% carbohydrate on a dry matter basis and the turkey to 52.6%, where 46.2% is typical for an adult dry food. Nutritional balance reads Poor on the lamb and Average on the turkey, while protein and processing runs the other way at Good on the lamb and Average on the turkey. Transparency reads Outstanding on the pair, with value Good on both. Set against that, every animal entry is named and quantified, the grain-free promise is kept without a single cereal on either list, and the whole thing is honest about what it is.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb (34.0%) (Lamb Meal 22.5%, Freshly Prepared Lamb 5%, Lamb Fat 4.5%, Lamb Digest 2%), Potato Flake, Sweet Potato (20%), Potato Protein, Whole Peas (5%), Poultry Oil, Beet Pulp (2%), Whole Linseed (2%), Monosodium Phosphate, Dried Carrot (0.5% equivalent to 4% Carrot), Seaweed Meal (0.5%), Chicory Root Extract (as a source of Prebiotic FOS) (0.1%), Dried Broccoli (0.05% equivalent to 0.39% Broccoli), Dried Parsley, Dried Rosehip, Dried Thyme, Yucca Extract (0.02%), Dried Spearmint.

The meat is broken into four entries on each label, which is more disclosure than most labels manage. On the lamb it is 22.5% lamb meal, 4.5% lamb fat, 5% freshly prepared lamb and 2% lamb digest. The turkey takes the same four at 22%, 4.5%, 5% and 2%. The protein work is done by the meal, because fresh meat carries water the oven then drives off. The fat is there for energy, and the digest is what makes the kibble taste of something. In the lamb, protein converts to 23.9% of dry matter; the turkey reaches 25.0%.

No cereal appears on either list. Sweet potato carries the starch at 20% on the lamb label and 33% on the turkey, with potato flake behind it. Whole peas at 5% sit behind them, and whole is the word that matters. The intact pea brings fibre and antioxidants along with a spread of vitamins. A refined pea protein would carry the protein and leave the rest behind.

One entry on the lamb list is worth flagging plainly. Poultry oil appears there as part of the fat, which means that recipe is not lamb and nothing else, whatever the front of the bag suggests. Most dogs will not notice it at all. For a dog you are deliberately keeping off chicken and turkey it matters, and the turkey recipe carries no such crossover: the only animal material on that label is turkey.

Behind the meat, the small print does sensible work. Whole linseed at 2% carries the omega 3. Plant omega 3 is slower for a dog to use than the marine kind, and no fish appears anywhere on either label. Beet pulp gives both soluble and insoluble fibre, chicory root extract at 0.1% carries inulin to feed the gut's good bacteria, and carrot and seaweed at 0.5% each round the vegetables off. Broccoli, parsley, rosehip, thyme and spearmint close the list at trace level as seasoning and nothing more.

Every added mineral carries a dose: zinc at 100mg, iron at 60mg, manganese at 50mg, copper at 8.0mg, iodine at 2.5mg and selenium at 0.1mg, with vitamin E at 150mg. The forms used are sulphates and oxides, not chelates. The preservative is a natural one, mixed tocopherols from the vitamin E family, which is the choice you want to see on a bag that will sit open for weeks.

Lamb across four entries at 22.5% meal, 5% freshly prepared, 4.5% fat and 2% digest, on a lower sweet potato share of 20% with potato flake taking up the slack. It is the richer recipe at 13.0% fat and the heavier one on mineral at 10.5% ash, and poultry oil on this list is the one place the recipe steps outside its own animal.

£3.67 a kilo from the 15kg bag and £6.00 a kilo from the 2kg, in both recipes.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition gets through 243 to 248 grams a day, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That lands between £0.89 and £0.91 a day. The lamb bag's table asks 210 to 365 grams for a dog of 12kg to 25kg. Let the waistline settle which of the two figures fits.