Updated 01 Sep 2023
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Tails.com Example Recipes Adult

Type of food

Complete dry extruded

Dog types

Pet dogs

Breed sizes

Suitable for toy breed dogs
Adult weight 1-4kg. e.g. Chihuahua, Pomeranian, Yorkshire Terrier
Suitable for small breed dogs
Adult weight 4-10kg. e.g. Beagle, Dachshund, Jack Russell
Suitable for medium breed dogs
Adult weight 10-25kg. e.g. Border Collie, Staffie, Springer, Vizsla
Suitable for large breed dogs
Adult weight 25-45kg. e.g. Boxer, Labrador, Greyhound
Suitable for giant breed dogs
Adult weight 45kg+ e.g. Bernese, Great Dane, Mastiff

Dog ages

From 12 months to 7 years

Pack sizes

1kg packs

RRP

1kg packs = £5.23

Exclusive to

Tails.com

Notes

Tails.com generate 'bespoke' formulas according to the details customers enter on their website. The recipes presented here are just a sample of those available.

For the above recipes we entered 4 year old neutered male at ideal weight doing 1 hour exercise per day with no special dietary requirements.

To see what formula they recommend for your dog, you will have to create an account on the Tails.com website.

Please take a look at our review below for more details.

AADF rating

55%

At a glance

Natural: Free from added artificial preservatives, antioxidants, colourings, flavourings or other controversial synthetic ingredients
Not high in meat: Contains less than 30% meat ingredients (on a dry matter basis) or meat percentage is unspecified
Not hypoallergenic: Contains wheat, maize, dairy products, soya products and/or artificial additives or has an ingredient list that is too unclear to rule out their presence
Not clearly labelled:

It is difficult to tell exactly what is in this food due to a lack of labelling clarity.

Certified nutritionally complete: This food complies fully with the complete food nutrient tolerances as recommended by FEDIAF and/or AAFCO

Price per day

£

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Nutrition

Composition

Mixing bowl:

Maize, Chicken 26.8% (Chicken Meal 12%, Chicken Offal 9.5%, Chicken Fat 3.5%, Chicken Gravy 1.8%), Poultry 4.3% (Poultry Meal 3%, Poultry Fat 0.9%, Poultry Gravy 0.4%), Maize Protein Feed, Maize Protein, Meat and Bone Meal 3.2%, Beef Meal 3.2%, Brown Rice, Beet Pulp, Minerals and Vitamins, Linseed, Sweet Potatoes, Dried Yeast, Dried Seaweed, Potatoes, Salt, Chicory Extract, Glucosamine Hydrochloride, Chondroitin Sulphate, Yucca Extract, Marigold.

As fed (BETA):

Nutritional additives (per kg)

Biotin 0.07 mg, Zinc 56.73 mg, Manganese 21.94 mg, Iodine 1.21 mg, Iron 15.04 mg, Copper 1.52 mg, Selenium 0.04 mg, L-Carnitine 25.75 mg, Vitamin D3 (as Cholecalciferol) 1622.62 IU, Vitamin a (as Retinyl Acetate) 15366.32 IU, Vitamin E (as Alpha Tocopherol Acetate) 316.8 mg, Vitamin C (as Ascorbyl Monophosphate) 36.48 IU.

Typical Analysis

Protein 24.9%, Fat 12.9%, Fibre 2.8%, Ash 7.8%, Moisture 8.0%.

Energy

370.1 kcal/100g

Dry weight nutrients

Above average

Average

Below average

* NFE carbohydrate level (i.e. not including fibre). Level estimated from available data.

Pricing

1kg packs RRP

£5.23

Grams per day

0g

Cost per day

£

Company

See more
Company info
Name: Tailsco
HQ: London, UK
Parent company: Nestle S.A.
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Manufacturer's product description

" Bespoke kibble design

Optimised kibble size for Bichon Frise cross Lhasa Apso cross Poodle (Miniature)s.

Strong immune system

With selenium, beta-carotene and antioxidants to help keep your dog's immune system healthy

High quality protein

High quality protein to help your dog maintain a healthy body condition.


Tails.com is a nutritionally tailored dog food service which creates a personal recipe for your dog from over a million combinations and delivers it to your door.

We believe that every dog is different; why should we feed them the same? Being nutritionally tailored, your dog's kibble recipe will contain the right balance of fat, fibre, protein, vitamins, minerals and supplements for them and, when your dog's needs change as they age, so their unique recipe changes too.

Our innovative approach to technology and manufacturing means we're able to offer this level of personalisation at scale. And, because we sell directly to our customers, we're able to offer their dogs' unique recipe at affordable prices.

Tails.com offers free UK-wide delivery, and includes a handy portion cup so you never have to think about the right volume of food to feed your dog. "

Tails.com Review

We don't usually do full written reviews any more (as they are just too time consuming to write and keep up-to-date) but with the sheer amount of questions we're getting about Tails.com right now, we think this one is well warranted.

What is Tails.com?

Tails.com is the first and best known 'bespoke' pet food producer in the UK. Using your dog's details, they create a food that is "perfectly tailored to your dog's unique nutritional needs", deliver it to your door in just the right amounts each month and even put your dog's name on the bag!

The concept has proven extremely popular and, as a result, Tails.com has quickly established a huge presence in the industry.

In 2018 Nestlé Purina acquired a controlling share in the business.

Are Tails.com recipes really bespoke?

More or less. Tails has a selection of stock recipes with titles like 'Active Mobility', 'Calorie Management', 'Healthy Activity' and so on. The details a customer enters into the Tails.com website determine which stock formulas are blended together and in what ratios to provide over a million possible combinations. So while it's true that each dog's food is not prepared and cooked individually (which would frankly be impossible), the final mix of ingredients and nutrients is effectively bespoke.

How do I see my bespoke ingredients list?

At the very least you will have to register an account (including providing your email address and filling in a questionnaire) before you get access to any specifics like ingredients, typical analyses etc. and even then it's not guaranteed. Several times while we were creating test formulas on the Tails.com website, the ingredients lists and nutritional breakdowns were not provided at any stage in the process.

Of course, we understand it's impossible for Tails.com to declare the full ingredients lists before customers provide their dogs' details but for the sake of transparency, Tails should really remove the registration requirement, ensure the ingredient list is always provided and publish the ingredients lists of all of their stock recipes so that customers at least have some idea of what they are in store for before signing up.

Is Tails.com food any good?

The big question. Naturally, with so many different permutations available, some formulas are better than others. By our standards, the majority of the ingredients lists we were able to generate through the Tails.com website were scored between 45% and 65%. For some specific dogs with quite niche nutritional requirements, it was possible to generate formulas rating up to 71%.

At the higher end, Tails.com formulas generally contain relatively high proportions of meat (including fresh meat), some good quality whole grains and a decent array of nutritional supplements. Conversely, at the lower end, Tails formulas often contain large quantities of wheat and/or maize, numerous unclear ingredients and artificial additives.

Interestingly, what you pick as your dog's current diet has a sizeable impact on the formula Tails generate for you. Essentially, if you are currently spending a lot on dog food, they will aim to match that by generating a higher quality, more expensive formula and for those currently spending less, the bespoke formula will be lower grade and less expensive.

Is Tails.com food expensive?

From our findings, feeding a dog on Tails dry food is slightly more expensive than the market average. For example, for an average 14kg adult dog with no special dietary requirements you would be looking at around £1 per day (compared with the market average of 85p/day).

It's worth noting that this is also considerably higher than Tails themselves advertise (49p/day for an average small dog, 68p/day for an average medium dog).

As you might expect, the more special dietary requirements you add, the higher the price gets.

Conclusions

To sum up, Tails formulas are generally quite unremarkable in terms of quality and come in at a slightly above average price.

You can make specific requests on the website's questionnaire to improve the quality somewhat but that will also bump up the cost.

For some dogs with very specific dietary needs, Tails.com's customisability might be helpful but for the vast majority a quick search on our dog food directory will likely prove more productive with no shortage of higher quality, lower cost, more transparent options to fit almost any nutritional requirements.

Comments

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Anna Walker 7 months ago

After speaking with a 'nutritionist' at tails. I would absolutely advise people to avoid this brand at all costs. They are unable to give clear analytical breakdowns of all ingredients. Nestle sell far more nutrionally complete foods at a cheaper price. They were unable to give me a percentage of nutrients, particularly the taurine content which as very concerning. They use chicken meal as the main ingredient to reduce costs at manufacturing level and then sell at a premium price. They state 'poultry' which can include both duck and turkey. They could not give me a breakdown of how much meat meal/gravy was used and to find out that the food is made up of a whopping 48% carbs is disgusting for a food that presents itself as a premium brand.

AVOID THIS FOOD AT ALL COSTS

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Critters Kitchen Anna Walker 6 months ago

Because it depends on the recipe for each dog, or do you not understand the words bespoke and tailor made

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MartaAS 8 months ago

I know this varies depending on details you enter but it’s so different from mine! Mine has way more protein, maize is third on list (first three are meat). Very weird

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Critters Kitchen MartaAS 6 months ago

Because they are biased to the brands that pay them best

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slljarvis 10 months ago

I have 2 border terriers staying with me who are fed on Tails. Apparently specialised to help with anal gland problems. They seem to poop quite a lot, 4/5 times a day, and one of them drinks a lot. On the plus side they don't fart and are keen to eat it. My own dogs (whippet crosses) were fed on Nature's Menu minced tripe, or Butchers with plain mixer and occasional sardines, carrots, healthy human food scraps. They did not poop or drink as much as these little guys, also rarely farted .

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Patrick Murray one year ago

Hey folks,just got my delivery today,dog loves it,french bull dog,I do like the scooper you set up yourself,but dog destroyed the food,but like every thing tasty doesn't mean healthy,royal canin etc he will leave sitting for hours,this stuff from Tails blink and it's been eaten.but this is only day one.post back soon if any updates needed.

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nathan gittins one year ago

As the review suggests each blend will be difference so I suppose you have to try to see if it works but this is my experience. I had a free trial which I carried on after the first month. I have a 3 year old fairly active lurcher, an hour total walk per day. He was in great shape and had many comments on his coat and condition from Vets and other dog owners. Wishin 2 months tho he has lost weight and his coat looks terrible. I increased the quantity on the calculator and this made it over £70 a month. He couldn’t finish the extra quantity of food and although he did enjoy this brand more so than others because of his condition and health I will be going back to Dr John’s Titanium and Butchers Tripe asap.

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Emma Smith one year ago

We use tails for our 2 bulldogs, its the first food we have found that they haven't had allergies to!! We have tried many many foods and we've had to stop them eating or theyv had upset stomachs, but since being on tails they do 2 poos a day, their coats are so healthy and most importantly no allergies!!

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Maureen 2 years ago

How strange - I have hypoallergenic recipe from Tails for my Husky (super happy) - over 35% of salmon and my second dog (new puppy) has 36% of chicken in it. I did some research as Tails only have chicken for puppies but this website got something wrong. Seems like really out of date info or simply value range... I think those examples are carefully selected. I have not seen recipe for my dog like that (I have Husky and Staff)... at the end it suppose to be tailored product so I guess not really good representation. Yet another "i know it all" blog :-/

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All About Dog Food Maureen 2 years ago

Hi Maureen. As mentioned above, we entered the following criteria into the Tails site three months ago and got back the above recipes:
4 year old neutered male at ideal weight doing 1 hour exercise per day with no special dietary requirements.
All other settings were just set to their defaults.
Another quote from above: "You can make specific requests on the website's questionnaire to improve the quality somewhat but that will also bump up the cost."
So I guess we're more or less on the same page.

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Critters Kitchen All About Dog Food 6 months ago

Also the fact that they don't pay you well enough for a good review

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Critters Kitchen Maureen 6 months ago

The site is biased to the brands that "pay their bills"

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melanie 3 years ago

Terrible. 10 year old terrier lost condition - no energy, got fat, poohed constantly. Back on Arden Grange, is now 12 and runs around on 3 hour walks happy as anything. Lean, shiny coat and no excessive poo.

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Monica 3 years ago

OMG... Tails is amazing! I just got my food for pup and he loves it more then Eukanuba we got from breeder. Biscuits are so much bigger so he crunches it. I think it helps with his teeth (he is now biting a lot). Easy scoop and clear instruction. I was a bit worried about price but I was told by lovely guys in Tails that as my dogs grows the price stays the same!!! OMG - I can't believe it! Great ingredients too! Prebiotics - perfect when you think about immune system. Guys - where have you been hiding!

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sian beynon Monica 2 years ago

Surely @@disqus_LLgohX6Etp:disqus you work for tails with that review - The fact Nestle have a big share in the company is enough to make me wary!?

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Critters Kitchen sian beynon 6 months ago

Unfortunately Nestle and Mars own most brands these days

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The Wick Monica one year ago

Wow that's one of the fakest reviews I've seen in a long time.

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Critters Kitchen The Wick 6 months ago

The truth is hard to believe isn't it

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WATTS1204 Monica 11 months ago

Fake review why not produce high quality high scoring dog food then you won’t have to have staff be sneaky and lie on here. Dishonest company!

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Critters Kitchen WATTS1204 6 months ago

Because this site only gives high scores to high paying brands

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Lorna doone Critters Kitchen 6 months ago

My EBT seems to like her trial bag,but I’m not so sure after reading these reviews,I have noticed that she poos a lot ,🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤔

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