The Harringtons Duck Adult Wet Dog Food is the duck recipe in the tray range. Duck is worth knowing about for a practical reason: it is a protein most dogs have never eaten, which makes it useful when the usual meats have stopped agreeing with one.

Key Features

• Freshly Prepared Duck: A less common protein, which is the point of it
• Worth Trying For Sensitivity: A meat a dog has not met before is less likely to be one it reacts to
• Grain-Free: No cereal in the wet range at all
• Tray Cooked: Sealed and cooked in the tray, so nothing is added afterwards
• Complete And Balanced: A full diet on its own, or a mixer with dry food
• No Artificial Colours Or Flavours: And no dairy, soya or added wheat
• Made In Yorkshire: Produced in the UK by Inspired Pet Nutrition

Tray Cooked, And What That Means

These are cooked in the sealed tray rather than cooked and then packed, which Harringtons call the FreshCook method. The practical consequences are worth knowing: nothing is added after cooking, so no preservative is needed, and the tray is sterile until you open it. Once it is open it behaves like any fresh food -- fridge, covered, two days.

What Is Not In It

Harringtons build the range around exclusions, and these are the ones they list: no artificial colours, no artificial flavours, no dairy, no soya, no added wheat. Read the word added carefully. A food can be free from added wheat and still contain other cereals, which the Complete recipes do in the form of rice and maize. If you need a genuinely cereal-free food, that is the Just 6, Superfoods and Salmon & Potato recipes rather than Complete.

Wet, Dry Or Both

Either can be a complete diet and mixing them is fine. Dry is cheaper per day, keeps once opened and is easy to measure. Wet is roughly eighty per cent water, which matters far more for cats than dogs. If you mix, split the daily allowance between the two rather than feeding a full portion of each -- that is the commonest way a pet quietly puts on weight.

How Much To Feed

Treat the chart on the bag as a starting point, not an instruction -- the figures assume an average activity level and most pets are not average. The honest check is body condition rather than the number on the scales: you should be able to feel the ribs easily under a thin covering, see a waist from above and a tuck from the side. Weigh the food rather than scooping it, and count treats, because that is where the extra calories almost always come from. Fresh water with every meal.

Changing Food Gradually

Switch over a week to ten days rather than overnight. Start at roughly a quarter new food to three quarters old, move to half and half, then three quarters, holding each stage for two or three days. Loose stools during a change are normal. Loose stools still there a week after you finish mean the food does not suit. Cats are less forgiving than dogs about this and may simply refuse a sudden change.

Storing It In This Climate

• Keep dry food in its own bag inside an airtight container rather than tipping it loose into a bin. The bag has a fat barrier, and the batch code and best-before are printed on it.
• Heat and humidity turn the fat in kibble rancid faster than anything else does. Somewhere cool and dark, never a hot garage, balcony or car.
• Use a large bag within about six weeks of opening. A 15kg bag is only good value if your dog gets through it while it is still fresh.
• Opened wet food goes in the fridge covered and gets used within two days. In summer, anything left down for more than twenty minutes should go in the bin rather than back in the bowl.

When A Food Change Is Not The Answer

Diarrhoea lasting more than a couple of days, blood or black tarry stools, repeated vomiting, scratching to the point of broken skin, recurring ear infections, or any unexplained weight loss all need a vet rather than another bag of food. Switching foods repeatedly is one of the commonest ways an underlying problem goes undiagnosed for months, and it also makes a proper elimination diet harder to run later.

The Carbon Claim

Harringtons describe themselves as the UK's first carbon-negative pet food company and say more than 98 per cent of their packaging is recyclable. That is their claim rather than our measurement, and carbon negative in practice generally means emissions are offset rather than never produced. It is worth knowing because very few pet food brands publish anything on this at all -- and worth reading as marketing rather than as an audit.

Who Makes It

Harringtons is made by Inspired Pet Nutrition in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, which also makes Wagg and Butcher's. One thing worth untangling: the 1923 date you see attached to the brand belongs to the company, not to this range. It refers to the year the Harrington family started an animal feed mill in Tadcaster. The Harringtons pet food range itself launched in 2008.

Good To Know

• Wet food is around eighty per cent water, so a dog fed only on wet needs considerably more by weight than it would of kibble. Follow the guide rather than your eye.
• Warm it slightly for a fussy or elderly dog. Smell drives appetite, and cold food out of the fridge smells of very little.
• In summer, do not leave a tray down for more than twenty minutes. What is left goes in the bin, not back in the fridge.
• If you are saving a novel protein for a possible elimination diet later, do not use it up as an everyday food now. Once a dog has eaten duck regularly, duck stops being novel.