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Wild Calling! Dog Food Review (Canned)

Rating:

Product May Have Been Discontinued
Unable to Locate Complete Label Info
On Company Website1

Wild Calling! canned dog food receives the Advisor’s second-highest tier rating of 4 stars.

The Wild Calling! product line includes 7 canned dog foods.

Each recipe below includes its related AAFCO nutrient profile when available on the product’s official webpage: Growth, Maintenance, All Life Stages, Supplemental or Unspecified.

Important: Because many websites do not reliably specify which Growth or All Life Stages recipes are safe for large breed puppies, we do not include that data in this report. Be sure to check actual packaging for that information.

Use links below to compare price and package sizes at an online retailer.

Wild Calling! Mountain Lake was selected to represent the other products in the line for this review.

Wild Calling! Mountain Lake

Canned Dog Food

Estimated Dry Matter Nutrient Content

Protein = 41% | Fat = 32% | Carbs = 19%

Ingredients: Duck, water sufficient for processing, turkey liver, guar gum, potassium chloride, salt, cassia gum, xantham gum, choline chloride, zinc amino acid chelate, iron amino acid chelate, vitamin E supplement, copper amino acid chelate, manganese amino acid chelate, sodium selenite, thiamine mononitrate, cobalt amino acid chelate, niacin supplement, d-calcium pantothenate vitamin A supplement, riboflavin supplement, biotin, vitamin B12 supplement, potassium iodide, pyridoxine hydrochloride, vitamin D3 supplement, folic acid

Fiber (estimated dry matter content) = 4.5%

Red denotes controversial item

Estimated Nutrient Content
MethodProteinFatCarbs
Guaranteed Analysis9%7%NA
Dry Matter Basis41%32%19%
Calorie Weighted Basis30%56%14%
Protein = 30% | Fat = 56% | Carbs = 14%

The first ingredient in this dog food is duck. Duck is considered “the clean combination of flesh and skin… derived from the parts or whole carcasses of duck”.2

Duck is naturally rich in the ten essential amino acids required by a dog to sustain life.

The second ingredient is water, which adds nothing but moisture to this food. Water is a routine finding in most canned dog foods.

The third ingredient is turkey liver. This is an organ meat sourced from a named animal and thus considered a beneficial component.

The fourth ingredient is guar gum, a gelling or thickening agent found in many wet pet foods. Refined from dehusked guar beans, guar gum can add a notable amount of dietary fiber to any product.

From here, the list goes on to include a number of other items.

But to be realistic, ingredients located this far down the list (other than nutritional supplements) are not likely to affect the overall rating of this product.

With one notable exception

This product contains chelated minerals, minerals that have been chemically attached to protein. This makes them easier to absorb. Chelated minerals are usually found in better dog foods.

Wild Calling! Canned Dog Food Review

Judging by its ingredients alone, Wild Calling! canned dog food looks like an above-average wet product.

But ingredient quality by itself cannot tell the whole story. We still need to estimate the product’s meat content before determining a final rating.

The dashboard displays a dry matter protein reading of 41%, a fat level of 32% and estimated carbohydrates of about 19%.

As a group, the brand features an average protein content of 42% and a mean fat level of 32%. Together, these figures suggest a carbohydrate content of 19% for the overall product line.

And a fat-to-protein ratio of about 78%.

Near-average protein. Above-average fat. And below-average carbs when compared to a typical wet dog food.

Free of any plant-based protein boosters, this looks like the profile of a wet product containing a notable amount of meat.

However, with 56% of the total calories in our example coming from fat versus just 30% from protein, some recipes may not be suitable for every animal. In addition, this same finding also prevents us from awarding the brand a higher rating.

Bottom line?

Wild Calling! is a grain-free, meat-based canned dog food using a notable amount of named meats as its main sources of animal protein, thus earning the brand 4 stars.

Highly recommended.

Please note certain recipes are sometimes given a higher or lower rating based upon our estimate of their total meat content and (when appropriate) their fat-to-protein ratios.

Wild Calling! Dog Food
Recall History

The following list (if present) includes all dog food recalls since 2009 directly related to this product line. If there are no recalls listed in this section, we have not yet reported any events.

You can view a complete list of all dog food recalls sorted by date. Or view the same list sorted alphabetically by brand.

To learn why our ratings have nothing to do with a product’s recall history, please visit our Dog Food Recalls FAQ page.

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A Final Word

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Notes and Updates

  1. “Last Update” field at the end of this review reflects the last time we attempted to visit this product’s website. The current review itself was last updated 08/19/2018
  2. Adapted by the Dog Food Advisor from the official definition for chicken published by the Association of American Feed Control Officials, 2008 Edition
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