Sneyd's Wonderdog Wonderdog Adult Grain Free White Fish review

The Average band is where our scoring settles this, just under the Good band most other adult dry foods occupy. Fish meal at 26% is a solid lead ingredient, since the water has already gone before it reaches the mixer, and the joint pair is written down with real percentages instead of being waved at. Carbohydrate at 46.7% of dry matter is all but level with the 46.2% usual for adult dry food. The vaguer end of the list is what holds it at that band, with white fish meal naming no species and poultry fat naming no bird. Ash at 11.0% of dry matter counts too, on the high side and typical of a meal that brings bone with it.

Ingredients, as declared: White Fish Meal (26%), Potato (25%), Sweet Potato (22%), Dried Sugar Beet Pulp, Poultry Fat, Peas (5%), Dried Brewers Yeast, Salmon Oil, Whole Linseed, Vitamins & Minerals(0.05% glucosamine & 0.025% chondroitin).

White fish meal at 26% opens the list. Meal is a concentrate, with most of its water driven off before it goes in, so what you read on the bag is close to what arrives in the bowl. The trade is that rendering is harder on a fish than gentle cooking would be, and that the term takes in cod, haddock, pollock and their relatives without saying which. Protein finishes at 26.4% of dry matter, a normal adult level.

The binding falls to potato at 25% and sweet potato at 22%. Peas at 5% sit behind them, and there is not a grain in sight. Dried sugar beet pulp is the fibre source, the fibrous material left over once the sugar has been extracted. Despite the name it carries, it is a genuinely useful supply of both soluble and insoluble fibre.

Poultry fat and salmon oil provide the fat between them. The marine omega 3s that skin and coat lean on hardest come from the salmon oil. Whole linseed adds the plant version alongside it. Poultry fat is an ordinary ingredient and dogs love the taste. Which bird it came from goes unsaid, so a fish led food is quietly carrying a little poultry.

The joint entries are tucked inside the vitamin and mineral line with percentages attached: glucosamine at 0.05% and chondroitin at 0.025%. Both are cartilage components and neither is a medicine, and the trial evidence behind them is mixed, but printing an amount beats the vague nod most labels give.

The trace element panel is fully dosed, with zinc at 100mg, iron at 60mg, manganese at 50mg, copper at 8mg, iodine at 2.5mg and selenium at 0.1mg per kilo. They arrive as sulphates and oxides rather than chelates, forms a dog absorbs a little less readily, and the selenium is sodium selenite, the version nearly the whole trade uses. Transparency reads Outstanding, while protein and processing and nutritional balance sit at Average. That reads about right for a recipe that does the ordinary things properly.

£3.63 a kilo, sold in 2.5kg and 15kg bags, with a sample pack for a first try.

Working from about 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), that is roughly 258 grams, or £0.93 a day. The bag's guide is wider, at 142 to 227 grams for a dog of 11kg to 20kg, so start in the middle of it and adjust to the waist.