Wilsons Premium Cold Pressed: Chicken review

1. Chicken 73.7
2. Turkey 73.7
3. Venison 71.7
4. Lamb 68.1
5. Haggis 67.8
6. Salmon 67.1
7. White Fish 57.5

Seven recipes across Excellent and Good. Typical dry food: Good.

Strong labelling holds the range up, and a moderate animal share with plenty of starch keeps it from climbing further.

• Dried ground chicken30%A concentrated ingredient, so it stands for far more raw chicken than the number suggests. The largest meat entry in the range.
• Sweet potato28.5%
• Peas25.5%At a quarter of the recipe they are doing structural work as much as nutritional.
• Chicken hydrolysate6%Protein already broken down: easy to digest and a strong palatant.
• Chicken oil3%Same bird again.
• Beet fibre, carrot, kale, apple, seaweed, pea fibre2% down to 0.5%
• Inactivated yeast postbiotic0.4%4 g/kg, the gut side of the tail.
• DL-methionine, L-tryptophan530 mg/kg methionineAmino acid balance.
• Glucosamine, chondroitin sulphate, carnitine400, 300, 50 mg/kgJoint pair and fat metabolism, every dose printed.
• Chicory, inulin, MOS, yucca, herbs, cranberry, turmeric, ginger500 mg/kg and below

Zinc, iron, manganese and copper as chelates of lysine and glutamic acid, a form absorbed better than plain sulphates, plus iodine and vitamins A, D3 and E.

No calcium figure on the label. It is listed for puppies, so ask Wilsons before a large-breed puppy grows on it.

Meat

Dried chicken 30%

17% to 29.5% elsewhere, some split across two species.

Other animals on the label

None, chicken only

Turkey and duck, venison and trout, and salmon with sea fish mix species.

Energy

381 kcal per 100g

Matched only by the White Fish; the Haggis is 345.

Carbohydrate, dry matter

46.7%

43.4% to 45.7% in the others.

The one to pick for a single-bird diet, and level at the top of the range on our scoring.

Every recipe is cold pressed: a dried ground meat leads, a hydrolysate of the same animal follows at 4% to 6%. A starch base of sweet potato with peas, tapioca, rice, oats or potato carries the pellet. The analyses barely move, with protein at 27.2% to 28.3% and fat at 15.2% to 15.5% of dry matter.

The functional tail is shared. A yeast postbiotic at 4 g/kg, MOS at 500 mg/kg, glucosamine at 400 mg/kg, chondroitin at 300 mg/kg and carnitine at 50 mg/kg appear on every label. Only the Turkey and Duck declares its moisture; the other six are worked from an assumed 8%.

Price per kilo

£6.17 (RRP)

Pack

2kg bag, 10kg bag, 3x 10kg bag

A 15kg dog eats (our estimate)

215 g a day

Cost per day, 15kg dog

£1.33

The richest pellet here, so the portion is among the smallest at about 215 grams a day for a 15kg adult.

Middle of the market for a cold-pressed food, and fair value for what is in it.