Acana Adult Dog Recipe review

This food sits in our Excellent band, a step above the typical adult dry food, which lands in our Good band. Three of its four pillars read Good, with transparency clear of them at Outstanding, so this is a broadly even recipe whose clearest strength is what the label tells you. The position is earned by an unusually well itemised label and a bowl that keeps carbohydrate below the typical mark.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh chicken (13%), chicken meal (13%), whole red lentils, whole green peas, whole chickpeas, fresh chicken giblets (liver, heart) (6.5%), turkey meal (6.5%), chicken fat (6%), fresh eggs (4%), raw hake (4%), lentil fibre, pea starch, fish oil (3%), whole green lentils, whole yellow peas, herring meal (3%), raw turkey livers (1%), salt, dried kelp, fresh whole apples, fresh whole butternut squash, fresh whole carrots, fresh whole pears, fresh whole pumpkin, fresh whole zucchini, dried chicory root, fresh beet greens, fresh kale, fresh spinach, fresh turnip greens, whole blueberries, whole cranberries, whole saskatoon berries, burdock root, lavender, marshmallow root, milk thistle, rosehips, turmeric.

There is no big headline meat figure here. The animal content arrives in instalments instead: fresh chicken and chicken meal at 13% each, chicken giblets and turkey meal at 6.5% apiece. Then come fresh eggs at 4%, raw hake at 4%, herring meal at 3% and raw turkey livers at 1%. Put together, our estimate makes the animal share 47% of the recipe, and the meals punch above their list positions because meal is meat with the water already taken out.

Legumes do all the binding: red and green lentils, green and yellow peas and chickpeas, with pea starch and lentil fibre in support. No grain appears anywhere on the list, and no potato either. Carbohydrate converts to 34.0% of dry matter, usefully under the 46.2% the typical adult dry food runs at.

Fish is woven right through the recipe. Raw hake at 4%, herring meal at 3% and fish oil at 3% cover the omega fats and add real protein of their own, an asset for skin and coat. It does mean the food can never be fed fish free.

The gut package is more deliberate than the 5% fibre declaration suggests. Lentil fibre and dried chicory root are both named, chicory being a prebiotic, and the additive panel finishes with a live probiotic, Enterococcus faecium, dosed in print. Calcium converts to 1.48% of dry matter, a comfortable level for an adult dog.

The long tail from apples to turmeric reads beautifully and weighs very little; our estimate puts the entire fruit and vegetable contribution at 0.8% of the recipe. Enjoy the lavender and burdock root as garnish. The recipe stands on its animal mosaic and its legume base, and those are the parts doing the feeding.

£6.49 a kilo, sold in 2kg, 6kg and 11.4kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition gets through about 239 grams a day, assuming roughly 840 kcal daily (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which comes to £1.55 a day. The label's own guide for a less active dog of that weight is 120 to 180 grams a day, so weigh against the dog in front of you.