Alpha Adult Grain Free: Lamb review

No band separates the two: both finish in our Average band, a step below the typical adult dry food, with the lamb a little ahead of the original inside it. Unnamed animal ingredients are the main drag, since meat and bone meal, poultry oil and fish meal all leave the species open, and protein and processing reads Poor on the original as a result. Neither placing is a safety verdict. They are findings about naming, and a dog fed either recipe is still getting a complete, grain-free diet.

Ingredients, as declared: Sweet Potato (30%), Pea Starch (15%), Lamb Meal (14%), Beet Pulp, Meat and Bone Meal, Potato Protein, Poultry Oil, Whole Peas (6%), Brewers Yeast, Fish Meal, Whole Linseed (0.5%), Chicory Root Extract (as a source of Prebiotic FOS) (0.1%), Mannan-oligosaccharides (Prebiotic MOS) (0.1%), Yucca Extract.

The original recipe stacks potato flake at 26.5% and pea starch at 16.0% ahead of its first animal entry, poultry meal at 14.0%. Meal is a concentrated dried protein, so that inclusion works harder than fresh meat would at the same figure, but the plant side still sets the tone, with carbohydrate estimated at 41.5% as fed.

The lamb version shifts the emphasis only slightly: sweet potato at 30% and pea starch at 15% lead, with lamb meal at 14% the first animal entry and potato protein helping the numbers along. Its protein declares at 24.0%, or 26.1% of dry matter once an assumed 8% moisture is stripped out.

The vaguer entries are where a careful reader slows down. Meat and bone meal names no animal, poultry oil names no bird, and fish meal names no fish. None of these is inherently poor eating, but they allow the contents to vary from batch to batch, and they take strict elimination feeding off the table.

The tail of both lists is sensible: whole peas, brewers yeast, whole linseed for plant omega 3s, and FOS with MOS as a prebiotic pairing for the gut.

Trace minerals arrive in standard inorganic forms, zinc oxide and sodium selenite among them, each dosed on the label. Chelated forms are generally absorbed a little more readily, but the panel here is complete and printed, which is more than many labels manage.

The lamb version, led by 30% sweet potato with lamb meal at 14%. Lamb is the only named meat, a useful lean for dogs that sit better on red meat than poultry, though the poultry oil and fish meal further down mean it stops short of single-protein status.

Both recipes work out at £3.00 a kilo in the 15kg sack.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would take about 251 grams of the original (£0.75 a day) or 257 grams of the lamb (£0.77). Both are calculated on the standard maintenance basis of 110 × bodyweight^0.75, around 840 kcal for that dog.