Home / Cat food / Dr. Elsey's / Duck & Chicken Recipe Kibble

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Duck & Chicken Recipe Kibble

Dry food · all cats

A formulated-to-meet, duck-first dry food from Dr. Elsey's, denser per cup than 93% of the dry cat foods we've verified. Cat-food pricing isn't in our corpus for this SKU yet, so cost-per-day isn't shown — the composition numbers below are fully verified.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference cat 10 lb · updated 2026-07-12

Your catupdates every number on this page
10 lb

Joint, kidney, dental or heart concerns? Labels can't honestly answer those — that's vet territory. Why we don't checkmark them →

The evidence

The Verified Label

Every food on this site gets this exact panel — same fields, same order, sourced from the official label — so brands finally become comparable. Dots show where this food sits among all 283 dry cat foods we've verified.

Verified LabelThe standardized pet-food panel
VPFD № DR-ELS
verified 2026-07-12

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Moisture hides the real recipe: dry food is ~5-10% water, wet food ~75-82%. Removing water puts every food on one scale, so these are the only nutrition numbers that can be compared across foods. As-fed label values shown small.
Protein 65.9%label: 58% min higher than 98% of dry cat foods
Fat 20.5%label: 18% min no corpus anchor for fat yet
Fiber 4.5%label: 4% max typical — the median dry cat food is 4.5%
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate <1%diabetic-check target <10% lower than 98% of dry cat foods
Magnesium as fed: not yet verified
why 0.12% DM
A commonly cited veterinary target for helping manage struvite-crystal (urinary) risk in cats is magnesium under roughly 0.12% on a dry-matter basis. This is a general, label-checkable guideline — not a diagnosis, and not a substitute for your vet, especially for cats with a history of urinary issues.
 Not yet verifiedmagnesium no threshold to check — magnesium not in our verified record
Ash 8% assumed — not disclosed on label 8%as used in carb estimate no corpus anchor for ash yet

Calories & cost — for your 10-lb adult cat

Calorie density 518 kcal/cup3956 kcal/kg denser than 93% of dry cat foods (median 415)
Daily serving½ cups
Cost per day—
Bag lasts—

Cost per 1,000 kcal not available yet — this cat food isn't price-matched to a retail listing in our corpus yet. Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.

Standards & ingredients

AAFCO statement
what this means
Two kinds of AAFCO claims exist. Most foods are only "formulated to meet" nutrient profiles — a paper calculation. A smaller set carry the stronger claim: fed to real cats in AAFCO-procedure trials ("Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate…").
 Formulated to meet · all_life_stages
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Duck · Dried Chicken · Hydrolyzed Pork · Gelatin · Pork Plasma
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyYes
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)None
BHA / BHT preservativesNone on label
Carrageenan (thickener)None
Ethoxyquin
why unknown
When a fish-meal supplier adds ethoxyquin, U.S. rules don't require it on the finished label — so no label can prove its absence for recipes containing fish meal. We report this as a gap rather than guessing.
 None — no fish meal in this recipe

Safety

FDA recalls — Dr. Elsey's, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 10 of 15 standard fields
Green = verified favorable · amber = gap in the record · red = verified unfavorable · gray = not disclosed / neutral fact.
Source: official label source (official) · anchors: 283 verified dry cat foods · how to read this label

The fit

For your cat, specifically

Checked for a 10-lb adult cat with urinary health + a low-carb goal — the same published criteria our finder uses. Change your cat above and these update.

✓
Validated for adult catsAAFCO statement covers adult maintenance.
·
Urinary fit — can't assessMagnesium is not disclosed on this label, so the urinary/struvite check cannot be run — most cat food labels omit it entirely (only a small share of the cat foods we've verified disclose magnesium at all).
·
Fiber 4.5% DMNot selected as a concern for your cat — shown here for reference.
·
Sensitive stomachNot selected for your cat — but shown here for reference.
·
Contains chickenNot selected as a concern for your cat — shown here for reference.
✓
Estimated carbs fit a low-carb target<1% carbohydrate (dry-matter, estimated) is under the ~10% DM target some vets use for diabetic/low-carb cats. Estimate only — not a lab measurement, and ash was assumed rather than disclosed on this label.

The source material

The full ingredient list

Every flag on the Verified Label is computed from this list. Ingredients are ordered by pre-cooking weight — the first five carry the most information.

Duck, Dried Chicken, Hydrolyzed Pork, Gelatin, Pork Plasma, Chicken Fat (Preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Ground Flaxseed, Dried Pork Liver, Natural Flavor, Salmon Oil, Calcium Carbonate, Potassium Citrate, Potassium Chloride, Choline Chloride, Fructooligosaccharides, Vitamins (Niacin, Vitamin A Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Folic Acid, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Vitamin D Supplement, Biotin, Vitamin B12), Minerals (Zinc Proteinate, Zinc Sulfate, Iron Proteinate, Ferrous Sulfate, Copper Proteinate, Copper Sulfate, Manganese Proteinate, Manganese Sulfate, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), Magnesium Oxide, Taurine, Mixed Tocopherols (Preservative), Vitamin E Supplement, Salt, Rosemary Extract

The maker

Who makes this — and how they back it up

The four questions the WSAVA nutrition guidelines tell you to ask a pet-food company. Every answer is sourced or marked as an undisclosed gap — never guessed. This is the "is it made competently?" axis that star-rating sites skip.

Owns its manufacturing Undisclosed

Where the FOOD is made is not company-confirmed (the Cheyenne WY plant is primarily litter); owned-vs-co-packer undetermined — left undisclosed rather than asserted.

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Undisclosed

Founder Dr. Bruce Elsey is a feline-only veterinarian (DVM) — NOT a board-certified veterinary nutritionist; no named DACVN/PhD found; null per rule.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 30 labels we’ve verified for this brand, and no company-wide claim was found either. Most pet foods are only "formulated to meet" AAFCO profiles (a paper calculation) rather than fed to real animals in trials — this is common, not necessarily a red flag.

Peer-reviewed research None found

A reproducible PubMed search (author-affiliation field, animal/pet-domain filtered) returns zero indexed papers for this brand name. Not proof no research exists — only that none is PubMed-indexed under this exact name.

source →
Parent company Precious Cat, Inc. (founder-owned; no larger parent) ↗ Founded 1987 ↗ Headquarters / plant Englewood, Colorado, USA ↗ FDA recalls on record None on record

Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Dr. Elsey's brand page →