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Tailored Blend For Bichon Frise
Tailored Blend For Cocker Spaniel
Tailored Blend For Staffordshire Bull Terrier
Tailored Blend For Labrador Retriever
Tailored Blend For Rottweiler
Tails.com Example Recipes Adult Hypoallergenic Review
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 = £5.26
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 and selected the hypoallergenic blend and maize free options.
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
58%
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
Hypoallergenic: Free from wheat, maize, dairy products, soya products and artificial additives
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
<p>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.</p>
<h5>What is Tails.com?</h5>
<p>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!</p>
<p>The concept has proven extremely popular and, as a result, Tails.com has quickly established a huge presence in the industry.</p>
<p>In 2018 Nestlé Purina acquired a controlling share in the business.</p>
<h5>Are Tails.com recipes really bespoke?</h5>
<p>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.</p>
<h5>How do I see my bespoke ingredients list?</h5>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h5>Is Tails.com food any good?</h5>
<p>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%.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Interestingly, what you pick as your dog's <i>current diet</i> 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.</p>
<h5>Is Tails.com food expensive?</h5>
<p>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).</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>As you might expect, the more special dietary requirements you add, the higher the price gets.</p>
<h5>Conclusions</h5>
<p>To sum up, Tails formulas are generally quite unremarkable in terms of quality and come in at a slightly above average price.</p>
<p>You can make specific requests on the website's questionnaire to improve the quality somewhat but that will also bump up the cost.</p>
<p>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 <a href="/the-dog-food-directory" alt="Dog Food Directory">dog food directory</a> will likely prove more productive with no shortage of higher quality, lower cost, more transparent options to fit almost any nutritional requirements.</p>
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Suitable for all breeds of dogs
Private label (or white label) pet foods are pre-formulated recipes that companies can order from
certain factories, add their own label or packaging and retail to the public as their own brand. They are therefore
available from numerous suppliers. Click here for more info.
In general, unless your dog has health issues, you probably won't have to worry about these figures.
Click here for more information
Mixing bowl composition
This is the ingredients list as printed on the packaging or manufacturer's website.
Think of the 'mixing bowl' composition like a recipe - all the ingredients you would need to put in a 'mixing
bowl' in order to make the food.
Ingredients have to be listed in descending order of their weight so the higher it appears, the more there is.
Highlighted ingredients
Ingredients that we believe to be controversial or inferior are highlighted in yellow
with particularly low grade, highly contentious or excessively vague ingredients in red.
As fed composition
While the 'mixing bowl' composition is useful for knowing what went into the food, it doesn't always reflect what
your dog is actually eating. This is because the processes that turn the ingredients into the finished pet food
can significantly alter the relative weights of the ingredients.
For this reason we've calculated the approximate 'as fed' percentages for the main ingredient categories in the
finished product.
Please note that these figures are very approximate. They are estimates based on the information provided by the
manufacturer in the ingredients list so the clearer the terminology and the more percentages they provide, the
more accurate our estimates will be. Wherever information is lacking, we always assume the worst.
Ingredient categories
◉ Meat ingredients: includes all meat and fish ingredients
except isolated fats/oils.
◉Added oils and fats: includes all isolated oil and fat
ingredients.
◉ Carb-rich ingredients: includes all ingredients derived from
grains, pseudo-grains, potatoes and other starchy root vegetables, sweet potato and legumes (except whole peas
which are categorised under fruit and veg) except for isolated protein and extracted oils. Also includes fibre
supplements.
◉ Fruit and veg: includes all whole vegetables and fruits.
◉ Other: all other ingredients. Mostly made up by nutritional
supplements and additives.
The dry matter level of a nutrient is the percentage there would be in the food if all of the water was
removed.
With water taken out of the equation, these figures allow the nutrient levels of foods of different types (like
wet and dry) to be compared on an even playing field.
In general, unless your dog has health issues, you probably won't have to worry about these figures. Click here for more information
The price per day of feeding this food based on feeding the manufacturer's recommended daily amount from 1kg packs bought at their rrp to a dog of:
kg
Go!
Note: All suggested feeding amounts and costs are only approximate and may vary considerably from dog to dog.
Be sure to contact the manufacturer if in any doubt.
57.93 out of 100 - Average
Our unique product ratings are calculated based on a number of characteristics including the quality and quantity
of the stated ingredients, certain nutritional and technological additives and the processing methods used to
create the food. They are designed to indicate how beneficial we think a food is likely to be for the majority
of dogs when fed on a daily basis for an extended period. Click
here for more information
Country of origin:United Kingdom
A technological additive is any substance added to a pet food "for a technological purpose and which
favourably affects the characteristics of feed".
While the primary effects of technoloical additives are certainly 'favourable' (increased shelf life in the case
of preservatives & antioxidants, better food texture and consistency in the case of gelling agents and
thickeners etc.) some have been linked to health problems in pets and should be treated with caution.
Unfortunately, many technological additives do not have to be declared by the manufacturer so just because they
do not appear on the label does not necessarily mean they are not in the food. If in doubt, ask the manufacturer
directly exactly what technological additives their foods contain.