Home / Dog food / Wellness / Whitefish & Herring Recipe

product photo
coming soon
no verified photo yet — never a mockup

Wellness · brand facts & recall history →

Whitefish & Herring Recipe

Dry food · adult dogs

A whitefish-first dry food that's cheaper per calorie than 19% of the dry foods we've priced and denser than 56% (you feed fewer cups) — $2.72 a day for your 40-lb adult dog.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-07-17

$81.98 · 18 lb $2.72/day as of 2026-07-17 Check price →
Tell us about your dogevery number on this page updates live ↓
40 lb
For a 40-lb adult: 2½ cupsper day $2.72per day 30 daysbag lasts passes 1 fit checks ↓

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 494 dry foods we've verified.

Verified LabelThe standardized pet-food panel
VPFD № WELLNE
verified 2026-07-17

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Moisture hides the real recipe: kibble is ~10% water, canned food ~78%. 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 38.9%label: 35% min higher than 95% of dry foods
Fat 16.7%label: 15% min typical — the median dry food is 16.7%
Fiber 4.7%label: 4.25% max typical — the median dry food is 5.4%
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate ≈30.9%computed anchor available once more brands disclose ash
Calcium / Phosphorus extended guarantees: Ca 1.6% · P 1.2% 1.33 : 1ratio, as fed within the AAFCO adult range (1:1 – 2:1)

Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog

Calorie density 393 kcal/cup3636 kcal/kg typical — the median dry food is 388 (median 388) — you feed fewer cups
Daily serving2½ cups
Cost per day$2.72
18-lb bag lasts30 days

Cost per 1,000 kcal: $2.76 — cheaper than 19% of the 360 dry foods we've priced (median $1.93). 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 dogs in AAFCO-procedure trials ("Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate…").
 Not yet verified from label
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Whitefish · Herring Meal (source of Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate) · Oatmeal · Barley · Whitefish Meal
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.
 Can't be determined from label

Safety

FDA recalls — Wellness, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 8 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)· price: Amazon, 2026-07-17 · anchors: 494 verified dry dog foods (360 priced) · how to read this label

The fit

For your dog, specifically

Checked for a 40-lb adult with a sensitive stomach — the same published criteria our finder uses. Change your dog above and these update.

·
Life-stage coverage not disclosedNo AAFCO nutrient-adequacy statement was found on the label for this SKU, so we cannot confirm adult-maintenance coverage.
✓
Passes our sensitive-stomach checksNamed animal protein first, and no unnamed by-products in the ingredient list.
·
Chicken-free recipeNot selected for your dog — but relevant if chicken sensitivity ever comes up.

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.

Whitefish, Herring Meal (source of Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate), Oatmeal, Barley, Whitefish Meal, Canola Oil, Dried Plain Beet Pulp, Flaxseed, Natural Flavor, Dried Chicory Root, Choline Chloride, Potassium Chloride, Taurine, Vitamin E Supplement, Spinach, Broccoli, Carrots, Parsley, Apples, Blueberries, Kale, Mixed Tocopherols added to preserve freshness, Vitamin B3 (Niacin), Zinc Proteinate, Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Sulfate, Iron Proteinate, Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin B1 (Thiamine Mononitrate), d-Calcium Pantothenate, Sodium Selenite, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Copper Sulfate, Manganese Sulfate, Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin), Manganese Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Biotin, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Yucca Schidigera Extract, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Folic Acid, Calcium Iodate, Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid), Dried Enterococcus faecium Fermentation Product, Dried Bacillus licheniformis Fermentation Product, Dried Bacillus subtilis Fermentation Product, Rosemary Extract, Green Tea Extract, Spearmint Extract

Wet ingredients like fresh whitefish shrink once cooked — which is why named meals appearing high on the list matter: they keep meaningful animal protein after moisture is removed.

Nutritional twins

Cheaper close matches

Verified foods with a closely matching label at a meaningfully lower cost per 1,000 kcal.

Blue Buffalo BLUE Wilderness Adult Dog Small Bite Chicken with Wholesome Grains Recipe
37.8% protein (DM)$1.54 / 1,000 kcal44% less per 1,000 kcal
Blue Buffalo BLUE Wilderness Adult Dog Grain-Free Chicken Recipe
37.8% protein (DM)$1.61 / 1,000 kcal42% less per 1,000 kcal
Blue Buffalo BLUE Wilderness High Protein Adult Dog Grain-Free Chicken Recipe
37.8% protein (DM)$1.61 / 1,000 kcal42% less per 1,000 kcal

Label-composition matches only: same species, form, and growth stage; same primary protein where both are known; grain-free preserved; protein within 4 points and fat within 4 points, and estimated carbs within 8 points, on a dry-matter basis. Not a medical or quality recommendation.

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 Owns its plants

Company owns and operates its own plants. (Wikipedia lists Arkansas/Minnesota/Netherlands — state naming differs by source, but both confirm company-owned manufacturing, not co-packers.)

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Undisclosed

Official pages refer only generically to 'veterinarians, animal nutritionists, and food scientists.' No individual named with a board-certified credential (DACVN/ACVN/ECVCN) or PhD in animal nutrition found in fetched sources; set null per rule.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Yes — sourced

4 of 250 verified labels in our corpus carry an AAFCO feeding-trial substantiation statement.

source →
Peer-reviewed research Unmeasurable

Count of PubMed-indexed records with the entity in an author affiliation (animal/pet-domain filtered). A reproducible FLOOR, not a total: affiliation strings vary and some research is published under institute names. research_entity_affiliation is recorded only for manufacturers with a dedicated pet-nutrition research arm; brand_affiliation.count is null where the brand name is an ambiguous homonym.

Parent company Wellness Pet Company (formerly WellPet), owned by Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. ↗ Founded 1997 ↗ Headquarters / plant Tewksbury, Massachusetts, USA ↗ FDA recalls on record 1 on record

Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Wellness brand page →