Wolfworthy 80/20 Countryside review

Our scoring places this recipe in the Excellent band, clear of the Good band that marks the middle of the adult dry category. Its protein and processing reads Excellent, with nutritional balance and transparency both reading Outstanding, and that is a fair description of the food. The meat share is large and every animal inside it is named and given a percentage. Protein converts to 40.2% of dry matter and carbohydrate to only 28.7%, a long way under the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. The label is specific nearly everywhere it counts.

Ingredients, as declared: Freshly Prepared Duck (36%), Dehydrated Pork (23%), Freshly Prepared Beef (10%), Sweet Potato (9.5%), Freshly Prepared Turkey (9%), Tapioca, Turkey Gravy (2%), Flaxseed, Beta Vulgaris, Lentils, Minerals, Garbanzo Beans, Mannanoligosaccharides (MOS, 260 mg/kg), Fructooligosaccharides (FOS, 260 mg/kg), Glucosamine (178 mg/kg), Methylsulfonylmethane (178 mg/kg), Chondroitin Sulphate (125 mg/kg), Yucca Extract, Dried Carrot, Dried Spinach, Dried Pumpkin, Dried Apple, Dried Seaweed, Dried Calendula, Dried Cranberries, Dried Camomile, Burdock Root, Aniseed & Fenugreek, Dried Peppermint, Green Tea Extract, Dried Dandelion, Dried Bilberries, Ginseng, Thyme, Marjoram, Oregano, Parsley Sage

You can check the 80/20 claim for yourself. Not many bags let you. Duck comes freshly prepared at 36%, with dehydrated pork at 23% behind it. Freshly prepared beef at 10% follows, then freshly prepared turkey at 9% and turkey gravy at 2%. Together they take the meat half of the name to its total. In the oven, fresh entries lose most of their water. Second place on the list therefore understates what the dehydrated pork puts into the finished kibble. The analysis agrees: protein converts to 40.2% of dry matter, a genuinely meaty figure for a dry food.

Pork is the interesting choice among the four. It turns up far less often in dog food than chicken or beef, so a lot of dogs have simply never met it. A dog cannot react to a meat it has never eaten. Paired with duck at the head of the list, this is a bowl aimed squarely at dogs that have already been round the usual birds.

On the plant side, sweet potato takes 9.5%, with tapioca, lentils, beta vulgaris and garbanzo beans behind it. Tapioca is worth naming honestly: it is a starch pulled from the cassava root and it brings almost nothing but the starch, so it is there to hold the biscuit together. With carbohydrate estimated at 28.7% of dry matter, none of the plant side is being asked to carry much.

The functional additions come with numbers beside them, not as bare names on a list. That is the difference between a supplement and a suggestion. Glucosamine and methylsulfonylmethane arrive at 178 mg/kg each with chondroitin sulphate at 125 mg/kg behind them, and MOS and FOS, the prebiotic pair, are both declared at 260 mg/kg. Yucca extract sits alongside them, included in kibble for the effect it has on what the garden smells like.

The mineral panel is better than most. Selenium is here as selenised yeast, not the plain selenite, and that form is taken up more readily. Both zinc and iron are declared partly as chelates. Zinc runs to 77 mg, iron to 48 mg, manganese to 18 mg, copper to 5 mg and iodine to 4.16 mg per kilo, with methionine at 1,106 mg and L-carnitine at 48 mg alongside. Calcium is declared at 1.3% of dry matter, a sensible level and a useful figure to find in print on a bag that includes puppies.

Then comes the tail, a long one: carrot, spinach, pumpkin, apple, seaweed, cranberries, camomile, burdock root, green tea, dandelion, bilberries and ginseng, with a shelf of kitchen herbs after them. None of it is declared with a percentage and none of it needs to be. It is the label's flourish. No recipe is improved by containing marjoram. The meat is what this food stands on, and that is precisely where you want the weight to sit.

£8.89 a kilo, sold in 1.5kg and 7.5kg bags, with a 60 g sample of the recipe available on its own.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 213 grams a day, which works out at £1.89, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own chart asks between 134 and 178 grams for that dog, so start inside that range and adjust as your dog responds.