Walker & Drake Small Breed Cold Pressed: Ocean Fish with Rice review

Both recipes hold our Good band, though they sit lower inside it than the rest of the brand's cold-pressed food and below the middle of the format, which shares the band with them. The strengths here are printed joint doses, trace elements named down to the source compound, and a list you can read in one pass. What keeps them where they are is the meat share, the lightest in the Walker & Drake catalogue, and the plant proteins standing directly behind it. Transparency reads Outstanding on both bags, with nutritional balance and value Good. Protein and processing lands at Good for the turkey and Average for the fish, a steady spread and no warning.

Ingredients, as declared: Ocean Fish 26%, Pre Gelatinised Rice 18%, Sweet Potato, Flaked Potato, Pea Protein, Potato Protein, Rapeseed Oil, Blueberry, Cranberry, Yucca Extract, Glucosamine Sulphate (415mg/kg), Chondroitin Sulphate (180mg/kg)

Rice is the dividing line between this line and everything else the brand presses. Pre gelatinised rice has been cooked and dried before it is pressed in, which makes its starch easier for a dog to break down, and small dogs with delicate digestions are exactly who that suits. It also means neither recipe can serve a grain free household, which is worth catching if that is why you came to the brand in the first place.

The ocean fish recipe is the shorter list and the lighter in meat, with ocean fish at 26% and rice at 18% doing most of the work before pea protein and potato protein arrive. Crude ash is declared at 13.0%, a level that fits a fish ingredient bringing bone with it, and protein converts to 32.6% of dry matter.

The turkey recipe fronts turkey meal at 28%, a dried concentrate rather than fresh meat, then works through flaked potato, pea protein and rice at 8%. Poultry fat, whole egg powder, gelatin and salmon oil follow it, so the animal side of that label runs broader than the name suggests. Its carbohydrate is the heavier of the two at 46.2% of dry matter.

Plant protein is a real presence in both recipes. Potato protein, pea flour and pea protein are all by-products of processing those crops. They lift a protein percentage very neatly, but a dog digests them less completely than the same figure arriving from an animal. Reading the meat share first is the honest way to compare these two labels with anything else on the shelf.

The supplement side is the best declared part of both bags. Glucosamine sulphate is printed at 415mg/kg and chondroitin sulphate at 180mg/kg. Those are real figures, not a nod towards joints. The trace elements are named with their source compounds, from zinc oxide through to sodium selenite. Vitamins are limited to A, D3 and E, and neither label prints calcium or phosphorus, which is the one figure some owners will go looking for. Yucca extract, blueberry and cranberry close both lists.

Ocean fish at 26% and pre gelatinised rice at 18% lead a list of only a dozen entries. Sweet potato, flaked potato, pea protein and potato protein sit behind them, with rapeseed oil supplying the fat. At 13.0%, crude ash is the higher of the pair, and carbohydrate converts to 41.3% of dry matter, the lighter of the two. No other animal appears on the label, and the species of fish is never named.

£7.00 a kilo on both recipes, in 6kg and 1.5kg bags.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), which works out at roughly 237 grams here, or £1.66 a day. The maker's own low activity guide is the more relevant one for this line, and it puts a 3 to 5kg dog at 65 to 96 grams a day.