Wainwright's Grain Free Adult Pouches: Chicken review

The chicken settles in our Good band and the tuna a step ahead of it in Excellent, level with the typical adult wet food. Our scoring treats wet as a strong category, so a Good placing here describes how the pouch is built and sounds no kind of warning.

The gap comes down to proportion. Named animal makes up 45% of the pouch and sweet potato another 12%. With the water taken out, the carbohydrate estimate lands at 27.0% of dry matter on the chicken, 22.4% on the tuna, where the typical adult wet food runs at 15.8%. Set against that, everything in the pouch is named and most of it carries a printed share. Plenty of wet labels offer less.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (45%), Sweet Potato (12%), Minerals, Olive Oil (0.3%), Seaweed Extract (0.2%), Chicory Extract (as a source of Prebiotic Fructo-oligosaccharides) (0.1%), Yucca Extract (0.05%), Blueberry Powder, Cranberry Extract, Pomegranate Extract

Chicken or tuna at 45% opens both lists, and no second animal follows it on either. Chicken is the meat most dog food leans on, and most dogs digest it easily, though its sheer ubiquity means intolerances to it turn up more often than to less common meats. Tuna gives the range its fish option and pushes the protein a long way up, converting to 57.1% of dry matter against 35.0% on the chicken.

The only starch on either label is sweet potato at 12%, so both pouches are genuinely free of cereal. It is a gentle carrier and an easily digested one. It is also why the carbohydrate estimate here sits above what a straight meat and broth recipe would show.

The tail is where the thinking shows. Olive oil is a well chosen fat, rich in antioxidants and kind to a coat, at 0.3% in the chicken pouch and 0.2% in the tuna. Seaweed extract at 0.2% brings iodine and a spread of minerals. Chicory extract at 0.1% feeds the useful gut bacteria as a prebiotic. Yucca extract at 0.05% is a traditional inclusion, often credited with settling digestion. The tuna pouch adds sunflower oil at 1.7%, a light oil naturally high in vitamin E.

The last three entries are pomegranate extract, cranberry extract and blueberry powder, with no amounts beside them. They sit at trace level, a flourish and not a reason to buy.

The added panel is dosed in print on both pouches. The chicken declares vitamin A at 1600IU, vitamin D3 at 180IU and vitamin E at 45mg, with zinc at 30.9mg leading the trace elements. The tuna declares vitamin A at 1375IU and vitamin E at 40mg, and vitamin D3 is not among them. It is a straightforward difference between the two labels and worth knowing if the tuna is the pouch you feed.

Chicken at 45% with sweet potato behind it, the richer of the two pouches on fat at 30.0% of dry matter and the denser on energy at an estimated 94 kcal per 100g. Its vitamin declaration is the fuller of the two, listing D3 alongside A and E.

£6.08 a kilo. The pouches are 150g, sold by the case of 16, and the figure is the same on chicken and tuna.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition means finding about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The chicken pouch covers that in roughly 890 grams at £5.41, the tuna in roughly 1000 grams at £6.08. The label's own guide for a dog of 12kg to 25kg is 675 to 1125 grams a day on the chicken and 675 to 1200 grams on the tuna.