Sneyd's Wonderdog Wonderdog Adult Grain Free Duck review

Duck earns a Good band result from us, level with the typical adult dry food. Half the recipe is one named bird, and the label prints the fresh and the dried portions on separate lines. Protein converts to 28.3% of dry matter, with carbohydrate estimated at 42.4%, well under the 46.2% normal for the category. The transparency reading is Outstanding, protein and processing and value are both Good, and nutritional balance lands at Average. The balance of the analysis is what stops it going higher, and nothing on the shopping list is to blame.

Ingredients, as declared: Duck 50% (Freshly Prepared Duck 28%, Dried Duck 20%, Duck Stock 2%), Sweet Potato 26%, Peas 6%, Potato, Beet Pulp, Linseed, Omega-3 Supplement, Minerals, Orange 0.3%, Cranberry, Fructooligosaccharides (FOS, 96mg/kg), Mannanoligosaccharides (MOS, 24mg/kg)

Duck takes half of this recipe, at 28% freshly prepared, 20% dried and 2% stock. The split is the useful part. Uncooked meat is largely water, so the 20% dried duck is what lands in the finished kibble at full concentration. Duck itself digests easily, brings good protein and is unusually well liked, which is why it does so well with fussier eaters.

The plant entries are sweet potato at 26% ahead of peas at 6%, with potato after them. Cereal appears nowhere. Estimated carbohydrate converts to 42.4% of dry matter against a category norm of 46.2%, and fat comes in at 15.2% of dry matter, so this is a richer bowl than the average kibble. A dog with a slow, sofa-shaped day will want portioning with an eye on the waist.

Orange at 0.3% and cranberry are the two fruit entries, and at that share both are seasoning rather than substance. Beet pulp does the fibre work more seriously, and linseed brings a plant source of omega 3 alongside the added supplement, which the label describes by purpose without naming the oil behind it.

The prebiotics are printed with their figures, FOS at 96mg/kg and MOS at 24mg/kg. Both go to work on the friendly bacteria right down at the end of the gut. Printing the dose is the straight way to declare them, small as that dose is. Ash converting to 9.8% of dry matter suggests the dried duck brings plenty of bone-derived mineral with it, which is ordinary for a dried meat entry.

What the label withholds is worth a line of its own. Moisture is not declared, so the dry matter figures rest on the standard 8% assumption, and the vitamin and trace element panel names its entries without dosing them. Neither changes what the food is. They simply mean two parts of an otherwise open label cannot be checked.

£4.33 a kilo, sold in a 15kg sack.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would work through roughly 242 grams a day on an estimate of 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance figure). The day rate on that is £1.05. The label's own guide asks 140 to 235 grams for a dog between 11kg and 20kg, so the two sit close together.