Walker & Drake Dual Protein review

Our Outstanding band is where this lands, well clear of the Good band the cold-pressed field settles into. Half the bag declared as named meat, a carbohydrate figure well under the category norm and a full set of printed vitamin and mineral doses are what earn the placing. Transparency reads Outstanding here, with Excellent readings for both protein and processing and nutritional balance.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried Turkey 28%, Dried Duck 22%, Sweet Potato, Salmon Oil, Brewers Yeast, Beet Pulp, Carrot, Apple, Tomato, Seaweed, Chicory, Cranberry, Blueberry, Vitamins, Green Tea Extract, Rapeseed Oil, Yucca Schidigera, Chondroitin, Marigold Powder.

Turkey at 28% and duck at 22% are both dried before weighing, so the half of the bag they account for is real meat weight rather than a number that shrinks in production. Turkey is the lean one of the pair and duck the rich one. Together they produce a protein declaration of 39.0%, converting to 42.4% of dry matter. That is a properly meat-shaped figure for a pressed pellet.

Sweet potato is the only substantial starch on the list, and the carbohydrate estimate reflects it at 24.5%, or 26.7% of dry matter, comfortably under the 43.2% typical of cold-pressed food. For a format that usually leans on starch to hold a pellet together, this is a genuinely lean build. It is the single clearest reason to pick this bag over the brand's other cold-pressed lines.

Salmon oil in fourth place is the label's most interesting entry. It is there for omega 3 fats, and sitting that high on the list makes it a real inclusion, not a drizzle over the top. Worth registering either way, because it means fish is in the bag whichever bird you came for.

Beet pulp and chicory both work on the gut, one as a steady fibre and the other as inulin for the useful bacteria living there. Carrot, apple, tomato, seaweed, cranberry and blueberry follow in small amounts, with the seaweed the one doing measurable work as an iodine source. Green tea extract, yucca and marigold powder close the list.

The vitamins appear inline in the ingredients and then properly in the additive declaration, with a per-kilo figure against each vitamin and each trace element. Calcium converts to 2.72% of dry matter, the sort of level a meat-heavy recipe reaches without needing a mineral top-up. Chondroitin is here for the joints, though there is no glucosamine partnering it as there is elsewhere in the brand's range.

£6.67 a kilo, in a 6kg bag.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), that comes to roughly 246 grams a day, or £1.64. The maker's own low activity guide suggests 161 to 270 grams a day for a dog of 10 to 20kg.