Ydolo Adult Cold Pressed: Duck review

Every recipe in this range settles in our Excellent band, a step clear of the Good band the middle of the cold-pressed field occupies. Protein and processing reads Excellent across all four, with transparency Outstanding on every one of them, and the printed doses running down the label are a large part of why.

Nutritional balance reads Good, which is the starch base doing what a pressed pellet needs it to do to hold its shape. The four are close enough to one another that the animal on the front, not the scoring, is what should choose between them.

Ingredients, as declared: 75% Fresh Duck meat, 20% sweet potato, 3% health mix: (banana (5982 mg/kg), artichoke (4486 mg/kg), chicory (4813 mg/kg), alfalfa (2393 mg/kg), apples (2094 mg/kg), pumpkin (1794 mg/kg), cranberries (1495 mg/kg), green-lipped mussel (1346 mg/kg), green tea (1196 mg/kg), rosemary (1047 mg/kg), thyme (897 mg/kg) oregano (748 mg/kg), milk thistle (269 mg/kg), spirulina (239 mg/kg), olive oil (209 mg/kg), yucca, cordyceps (179 mg/kg), shiitake, dandelion, ginger, turmeric), 1% trout oil, glucosamine (1000 mg/kg), chondroitin (850 mg/kg), msm (650 mg/kg).

Three quarters of every recipe is fresh meat or wild caught fish, which is a great deal of animal for a pressed pellet. Fresh meat brings its own water along though, so what survives the pressing is less than the headline figure suggests. What does survive is still a meaty analysis, protein converting to between 32.7% and 33.0% of dry matter across the four.

The only starch is sweet potato at 20%, and it does the job cereals do elsewhere in this category, holding the pellet together and carrying much of the energy. It holds carbohydrate to between 34.1% and 34.8% of dry matter, well under the 43.2% typical of cold-pressed food, and it brings fibre and beta carotene along with the starch.

The 3% health mix is where Ydolo shows its working. Banana, artichoke, chicory, alfalfa and apples lead it, with a rotating cast of berries, mushrooms and herbs behind, and most entries carry an individual mg/kg figure, a level of disclosure very few labels attempt. At these inclusions they season the recipe, though chicory earns its keep as a prebiotic and the printed figures let you see exactly what you are getting.

Glucosamine at 1000 mg/kg, chondroitin at 850 mg/kg and MSM at 650 mg/kg appear on all four labels, which are real inclusions with the figures to show for them. Taurine at 1000 mg/kg and L-carnitine at 500 mg/kg sit in the nutritional additives alongside them, the first for the heart and the second for fat metabolism.

Trout oil at 1% supplies the omega 3 fats, and green-lipped mussel sits inside the health mix of every recipe. Both are good things to find in a bowl. Both also put fish and shellfish into all four, so anyone who came to the Duck or the Iberico Pork hoping for a clean one-animal trial should know that. On the ingredients as printed, neither of those is a single-species food.

The vitamin and trace element panel is printed in full, and calcium is given at 1.47% of dry matter with no guesswork needed. Moisture is declared too, between 17.7% and 18.3%, so every dry matter figure here comes off the label itself.

Fresh duck meat at 75% with no other animal in the meat share, which makes it the closest thing here to a single-species recipe, the trout oil and the mussel aside. Its health mix is the longest of the four, adding green tea, cordyceps, shiitake, dandelion, ginger and turmeric. Protein converts to 32.8% of dry matter at 364 kcal per 100g.

Per kilo, the Chicken is £7.50, the Iberico Pork and the Wild Fish are £7.90 and the Duck is £8.65. Each recipe comes in a 2.5kg and a 10kg bag.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works on roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is 228g to 231g of pellet, and £1.73 to £2.00 a day according to the recipe.