Yora Pate: Apple & Parsnip review

Our Excellent band is where all three cartons settle, and they settle within a whisker of each other because they are one recipe in three dressings. The midpoint of the wet shelf reads Excellent too, so these sit level with the run of a strong category. The insect is well declared at 58%, with protein converting to 38.5% of dry matter, fat to 19.2% and estimated carbohydrate to 26.9%. What this food does that almost nothing else can is offer a dog an animal protein it has never encountered.

Ingredients, as declared: Freshly Prepared Insect 58%, Vegetable Stock, Apple 6%, Parsnip 6%, Pea Protein 3%, Brewer's Yeast 1.5%, Minerals 0.2%, Prebiotic MOS (Yeasts 0.09%), Prebiotic FOS (Chicory meal 0.09%).

The whole range is built on freshly prepared insect, and here it is 58%, printed as a percentage with no hedging. It is a complete protein and it digests well. For a dog that keeps reacting to one meat after another, though, the quality that counts is simpler. This has never been in the bowl before, and that is the whole use of a novel protein.

Vegetable stock follows and takes up most of the remaining room. Then come the two vegetables that give each carton its name, at 6% each, cooked right through the pate.

Pea protein at 3% is the entry to note. It is what pea processing leaves over, and its job is to lift a protein figure. Plant protein does not digest as well as insect or meat, so part of the 38.5% of dry matter in the panel comes from a less useful source than the headline suggests. The 3% keeps it a supporting player, and it is still worth seeing for what it is.

At 1.5%, the brewer's yeast is a small and sensible addition. Few natural ingredients carry more B vitamins, and it is a complete protein too. Behind it sit the two prebiotics, MOS from yeast and FOS from chicory meal, at 0.09% each, both aimed squarely at the gut.

At 7.7% of dry matter, fibre is high for a wet food. The insect contributes as much of it as the vegetables do, and dogs whose digestion likes some bulk tend to do well on it.

The added panel is short and every entry carries both a dose and a named chemical form: vitamin A at 3,300 IU, vitamin D3 at 275 IU, then iron, copper, manganese and zinc. That is more declaration than many wet labels manage, though calcium is not among the figures given.

Apple and parsnip at 6% each, the sweetest pairing of the three and the easiest sell to a dog with a taste for fruit. Everything else in the carton is identical to its siblings, energy included.

£7.67 a kilo, sold in 390g cartons, with the same figure on all three flavours.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats roughly 819 grams a day on about 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at around £6.28 a day. The label puts a dog of 10 to 20kg on between 520 and 877.5 grams a day, which brackets that estimate neatly.