Wolf Of Wilderness Dry Adult Duo Protein: Ebony Twilight (Wild Boar & Buffalo) review

All five recipes land in our Good band, the same band the typical adult dry food holds, and they earn it on much the same strengths. Protein converts to between 26.1% and 28.3% of dry matter, and estimated carbohydrate to between 41.8% and 48.1%, mostly under the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. Every animal entry carries a species and a percentage, apart from the beef fat and the hydrolysed poultry. The labels print no moisture figure, so those dry matter conversions assume the 8% a kibble usually holds. The distances between the five are small enough to ignore, which leaves the pairing itself as the thing worth choosing on.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh pork (26%), peas, potato flakes, poultry protein hydrolysate (11%), beef fat, wild boar protein (4%), buffalo protein (4%), dried beet pulp, dried apple pulp, linseed, brewer's yeast (2%), salmon oil (1%), potassium chloride, calcium carbonate, dried wild berries (total 0.3%: cranberries, currants, aronia berries), dried herbs (total 0.2%: mugwort, St John's wort, nettle leaves, camomile, yarrow, coltsfoot, dandelion root), dried yeast cell walls (0.2%: beta-glucans and mannan-oligosaccharides), chicory inulin.

The name says duo, the label says trio. Fresh pork at 26% opens all five recipes and does the heavy lifting, while the pair from the front of the bag arrive at 4% each, or 5% in the case of the salmon. That is no sleight of hand, because the list names the pork and declares it first. It does mean, though, that a dog picked out for goat or buffalo is mostly eating pig.

Pork is the interesting part of the story. Pork is a rare sight in dog food. For plenty of dogs it is genuinely new ground, and it is both palatable and easy to digest. Baking shrinks that fresh pork, water being most of what it loses, so every recipe also carries a dried pork protein or a hydrolysed poultry protein to hold the protein line up.

Beef fat is the added fat throughout, a change from the poultry fat most kibbles reach for and a welcome one for a dog kept off birds, though it does put beef in every bowl. Fat runs from 14.0% to 16.5%, generous for a maintenance food, so a quieter dog will want a smaller scoop than the label's table suggests.

The plant side is peas first and potato flakes second, with dried beet pulp and dried apple pulp for fibre and linseed for plant omega 3. Salmon oil at 1% supplies the marine kind. All five labels leave cereal out.

All five share the same finishing touches. Yeast cell walls at 0.2% carry the beta-glucans and mannan-oligosaccharides. Chicory inulin does the prebiotic work, and then there are wild berries at 0.3% and seven dried herbs coming to 0.2% in total. Potassium chloride and calcium carbonate are there to balance the minerals rather than to flavour anything.

Ebony Twilight and Velvet Gloom print a newer additive panel built on protein hydrolysate chelates of copper, zinc, manganese and iron, the forms a gut takes up more readily. The other three print an original panel and a newer one side by side, so the figures you get depend on the bag in front of you.

Wild boar protein and buffalo protein at 4% each, with hydrolysed poultry protein at 11% carrying the dried share. It is one of the two leaner recipes at 14.0% fat, and its estimated carbohydrate is the heaviest of the five at 48.1% of dry matter.

Ebony Twilight and Velvet Gloom are £4.02 a kilo, while Crimson Sunset, Ruby Midnight and Scarlet Sunrise are £4.29.

As a guide, and assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats between 219 and 229 grams a day. Depending on the recipe, that is between £0.91 and £0.95 a day.