Wellness Core Small Breed Savoury Medleys: Flavoured With Chicken, Turkey, Carrots & Green Beans review

The four trays sit together in our Outstanding band with nothing between them. Adult wet is a category that scores highly with us, and the middle of that shelf reaches our Excellent band, so this range sits a step above the shelf around it. Transparency reads Outstanding on every tray, with protein and processing and nutritional balance no lower than Excellent.

What carries it is straightforward: a named meat with a printed percentage at the top, a starch load that barely registers, and organ meat and egg on the list.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 49%, Chicken Broth, Turkey 3%, Carrots 3%, Green Beans 3%, Potato Starch, Chicken Liver, Eggs, Minerals.

Chicken leads every tray with a printed figure, running from 47% up to 49%, and chicken broth follows it. The broth is the one place these lists go quiet, since it carries no percentage of its own, which leaves a gap between the named chicken and the total animal content. Everything after it is itemised down to the last vegetable, which makes the gap stand out.

The second meat and the two vegetables sit at 3% or 4% apiece. That is enough to flavour a tray and to give it a name, and not enough to change what the dog is actually eating. Take the front of the pack as a description of the aroma, not of the recipe.

Potato starch does the binding. It is pure starch, without the fibre or the vitamin C and potassium a whole potato brings. This is the one entry chosen for how the food behaves, not for what it delivers. Its share is small: carbohydrate is estimated at 1.5% of the tray on two of the recipes and at nothing at all on the other two.

Chicken liver and egg close every list, and both earn their place. Liver carries vitamin B12 and vitamin A along with copper and folate, and for nutrient density there is little to touch it. Egg is a compact source of high quality protein and fat. Between them they do more for the nutrition than the second meat does.

The added panel is generous and, unusually, mostly chelated. Zinc at 69 mg, iron at 47 mg, manganese at 17 mg and copper at 11 mg per kilo are all bound to amino acids, a form dogs generally absorb well. Vitamin A is declared at 8000 IU, vitamin D3 at 236 IU and vitamin E at 36 mg. Selenium is here as sodium selenite. Of the two forms allowed in the EU, it is the one the great majority of makers reach for.

The ash figure is worth taking on its own. At 5.0% of the tray it converts to more than a fifth of dry matter on three of the recipes. That is a high reading for a wet food, and it reflects how much mineral matter the premix and the meat between them bring. That is a fact about the recipe and not a warning about it, and an adult dog on a complete food handles it.

Chicken at 49%, the highest in the range, with turkey at 3% and carrots and green beans at 3% each. This is the shortest list of the four and the closest to a straight poultry tray, sitting at 98 kcal per 100g.

The range comes in one 85g size.

Working from about 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, the standard 110 × bodyweight^0.75 maintenance estimate, a day comes to between 824 and 1012 grams depending on the tray. At that size of tray the arithmetic points the range firmly at the small dogs it is named for.