Within Adult & Senior Wet: Salmon review

Barely anything separates the three recipes, and all of them land in our Outstanding band, a step above the Excellent band the middle of the adult wet shelf holds. Meat share is doing most of that work. With 70% declared on the label, protein converts to 42.0% of dry matter. The carbohydrate estimate reaches only 12.0% on the chicken and turkey and 8.0% on the salmon, against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food. Every pillar reads Outstanding. This is a food that gets the important things right without reaching for anything showy.

Ingredients, as declared: Freshly Prepared Salmon & Fresh Chicken (70%), Sweet Potato, Peas, Carrots, Minerals, Postbiotic - Inactivated Yeast (Saccharomyces Cerevisiae) Fermentation Product (0.3%), Seaweed (0.1%), Salmon Oil, source of Omega 3 (0.1%), Prebiotic Chicory Root (0.1% including 0.06% inulin), Prebiotic MOS (0.1% including 0.03% beta glucans), Urtica Nettle (0.1%), Glucosamine (0.05%), Citrus Extract (0.015%), Yucca Schidigera, (0.015%), Chondroitin (0.005%).

The 70% is the number that matters and it is declared on all three labels. On the chicken recipe it is fresh chicken alone. On the other two, salmon or turkey is prepared fresh alongside chicken, and the pair share that 70% between them. That is worth knowing if you are trying to keep chicken out of the bowl.

Underneath the meat sits a short plant base of sweet potato, peas and carrots. None of the three lists carries a cereal. That keeps the estimated carbohydrate low, and it makes these recipes read as meat with vegetables.

Then comes a row of extras dosed to two and three decimal places, which is more candour than most wet labels offer. Inactivated yeast as a postbiotic takes 0.3%, chicory root and MOS each take 0.1% with their inulin at 0.06% and beta glucans at 0.03% spelled out, and seaweed and nettle take 0.1% each. Yucca and citrus extract sit at 0.015%. These are trace amounts and nobody buys a food for them, but printing the figures is a good habit.

Glucosamine at 0.05% and chondroitin at 0.005% are the joint entries. They are a gentle helping hand in the dinner rather than a treatment plan, so a dog already prescribed a joint supplement should carry on with it and take this as the meal underneath.

The added panel is generous and largely chelated, which tends to help absorption. Vitamin A comes at 3000 IU, vitamin D3 at 125 IU, vitamin E at 40 mg and vitamin C at 500 mg. The minerals are zinc at 25 mg, iron at 20 mg, manganese at 3.75 mg, copper at 2.5 mg, iodine at 0.15 mg and selenium at 0.02 mg from selenised yeast.

Salmon is freshly prepared alongside fresh chicken to make up the 70%, and this is the richest of the three at 9.5% fat, which converts to 38.0% of dry matter, and 130 kcal per 100g. Its estimated carbohydrate is the lowest in the range at 8.0% of dry matter.

All three recipes are £4.34 a kilo, and the sizes are 90g, 150g and 395g.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at £2.92 a day on the chicken and turkey and £2.80 on the salmon. That takes the standard maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). That is roughly 672 grams of the chicken or turkey and 646 grams of the salmon. The label's own guide is lighter, at 360 grams a day for a 10kg dog.