Wainwright's Light Adult Dry Food: Salmon & Rice review

Both recipes finish in our Good band, where the median adult dry food also sits. Transparency reads Outstanding, well clear of the Average on both protein and processing and nutritional balance. The gap is earned quietly. Two thirds of the declared meat is the dried kind, so more of it lives through the oven than the headline hints. The label prints a percentage for almost everything, down to 0.015% of chondroitin. The vitamin and mineral panel is declared in full. The size of the cereal side is what holds it back, and that is what a recipe leans on once the fat comes out.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon (33%) (Dried Salmon 28%, Freshly Prepared Salmon 5%), Rice (26%), Whole Grain Barley (20%), Beet Pulp (8.5%), Whole Ground Oats (4.5%), Dried Peas (3% equivalent to 12.5% Peas), Linseed (2%), Rapeseed Oil, Dried Carrots (1% equivalent to 8% Carrots), Seaweed (0.2%), Glucosamine (0.05%), Yucca Extract (0.02%), Chondroitin (0.015%)

Both varieties put 33% of the recipe into a single animal and print the split, 28% dried against 5% freshly prepared. That is the right way round. Only the part that survives the oven actually turns up in the bowl. A fresh figure shrinks a long way in the making, so the dried portion is the number that counts. Protein lands at 26.9% of dry matter in the salmon. The turkey reads 27.5%.

Rice at 26% heads the plant side, then whole ground oats at 4.5%. Whole grain barley sits in between, 20% in the salmon bag and 21% in the turkey. Cooked cereals of this sort are easy enough for a dog to digest, and whole grain barley keeps more of its fibre and minerals than the polished forms do. Beet pulp at 8.5% supplies most of the fibre, which is exactly what a lighter meal needs if it is going to hold a dog until the next one.

The entry that makes this a light recipe is L-carnitine at 150 mg. Weight formulas reach for it because it helps move fat towards the cells that burn it. Fat itself is pulled down to 7.5%.

Dried peas at 3% come from 12.5% of fresh peas, and dried carrots at 1% from 8% of fresh. Putting it that way round is the honest way to print a dehydrated ingredient. Linseed at 2% is where the omega 3 comes from, in its plant form. Conversion to the skin-active kinds is slower in a dog than it is from fish. Seaweed at 0.2% carries iodine and yucca extract at 0.02% is aimed squarely at what comes out of the garden end.

Each trace mineral comes with a dose in print: zinc at 50 mg, iron and manganese at 40 mg each, copper at 5 mg, iodine at 1 mg and selenium at 0.1 mg per kilo. Alongside them a full vitamin line doses vitamin E at 150 mg. These arrive as sulphates and oxides, not as chelates. A dog absorbs them marginally less well. The printed doses are what give the reassurance here.

Glucosamine at 0.05% and chondroitin at 0.015% are the two entries that do not trace back to the named animal, both being manufactured from animal material. At those levels they are supplements rather than ingredients, and most owners will never give them a second thought, but they are worth knowing about if you are holding a dog to one animal exactly.

Salmon supplies the whole of the 33% meat share. That makes it the version to choose when poultry does not suit. It carries whole grain barley at 20%, crude fibre at 3.6% and protein at 24.5%, which converts to 26.9% of dry matter.

£3.33 a kilo from the 15kg bag, which is the only size the salmon is sold in. The turkey adds a 2kg bag at £4.75 a kilo.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats around 265 grams a day of the salmon or 266 grams of the turkey. That assumes about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), and works out at £0.88 and £0.89 a day. For a dog between 12kg and 25kg the label's own table asks 180 to 310 grams, and the waistline should decide between the two.