Ydolo Adult Wet: Duck review

All four recipes finish level in our Outstanding band, which is what you would expect of a range that changes the animal and leaves everything else alone. Wet food scores well with us and its midpoint already reaches Excellent, so finishing a band clear of that takes a label of this kind. The animal share is declared, the starch is a single named root, and even the botanicals carry milligram figures.

Ingredients, as declared: 90% fresh duck, 5% 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 lip 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

The 90% figure is the whole pitch, and the labels break it down properly. Duck and Iberico pork are single animals at 90%. Wild Fish splits its 90% between sardines and anchovies at 30% apiece and mackerel and sea bream at 15%. The recipe named Chicken is the odd one out, putting chicken at 50% and adding sardines and anchovies at 20% each, so it is really a chicken and fish recipe wearing a chicken name.

Nothing else in the range brings carbohydrate: sweet potato at 5% is it. The estimate lands between 16.8% and 18.1% of dry matter against the 15.8% typical for adult wet food. A single named starch is a plainer construction than most wet recipes manage, and it makes the label very easy to check.

The 3% health mix is where Ydolo has had its fun. Banana, artichoke, chicory, alfalfa and apple run through all four. Pumpkin, blueberries, cranberries, green tea, cordyceps, shiitake, turmeric and ginger come and go with the recipe, alongside green lip mussel, milk thistle, spirulina, yucca and olive oil. Most entries carry a milligram per kilo figure, which is more than most brands bother with for a botanical blend. Between them they make up 3% of the food, so they are seasoning rather than medicine, and printing the figures lets you see that for yourself.

The joint supplements are the exception, because they arrive at levels you can act on: glucosamine at 1000 mg/kg, chondroitin at 850 mg/kg and MSM at 650 mg/kg, identical across all four recipes. Anything a vet has prescribed for a diagnosed joint problem still comes first. As a daily background in the bowl, though, these are real inclusions and not label decoration.

The marine omega 3 comes from trout oil at 1%, and that same 1% is why no recipe here is truly one animal. Doses run right through the added panel: taurine at 1000 mg/kg, L-carnitine at 500 mg/kg, a B complex, vitamins A, D3 and E, then trace elements all the way down to selenium. Taurine and L-carnitine both matter to the heart and neither is a given in a wet food.

Protein converts to between 38.4% and 39.3% of dry matter and fat to between 29.8% and 31.2%. That is a rich, fat forward analysis that suits a working or busy dog nicely, and it is worth portioning with care for a quieter one that naps its way through the afternoon.

Duck alone at 90%, the only recipe here built on a single bird. Its health mix is the longest in the range, taking in cordyceps, shiitake, green tea, dandelion, ginger and turmeric. At 146 kcal per 100g the portions it feeds are noticeably smaller than the chicken's.

£8.75 a kilo across all four recipes, sold in packs of 6 × 400g.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, start from about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £5.82 a day on the Chicken, £5.25 on the Wild Fish, £5.02 on the Duck and £4.97 on the Iberico Pork. These recipes are dense for wet food, so daily portions run smaller than the category usually asks, from about 568 to 666 grams.