Alpha Sensitive: Salmon review

The Good band is where the average adult dry food finishes, and both of these sit a step below it, in our Average band. The reason is the shape of the recipe, with no single ingredient to blame. Cereal does most of the carrying, protein lands at 22.0% of dry matter in the everyday recipe and 21.7% in the salmon, and the everyday list leaves every animal entry unnamed. Set against that, nothing on either label is hidden and the vitamins and trace minerals are dosed in full. For a settled adult dog that has always done well on grain, this is a plain food doing a plain job.

Ingredients, as declared: Whole Maize, Whole Oats, Rice (19.5%), Salmon Meal (18.5%), Rapeseed Oil, Brewers Yeast, Whole Linseed (0.5%), Chicory Root Extract (as a source of Prebiotic FOS) (0.1%), Mannan-oligosaccharides (Prebiotic MOS) (0.1%), Yucca Extract.

Whole maize and whole oats open both lists. Keeping the grains whole preserves the fibre and micronutrients that milling strips out, and oats in particular are gentle on a dog once cooked. Leading with maize does mean starch sets the tone here, with carbohydrate estimated at 54.4% of dry matter in the everyday recipe and 58.8% in the salmon.

The everyday recipe draws its animal content from meat and bone meal, poultry meal at 7.0%, poultry oil and fish meal, and not one of those names a species. Poultry could be chicken, turkey or duck, and the choice is free to change between batches. Bone meal is vaguer still, though it does bring calcium and phosphorus with it. For a food named Sensitive that is the honest limitation, because a dog you are trying to narrow things down for needs to know what it is eating.

The salmon recipe is the tidier of the two on that count. The whole list carries just one animal ingredient, salmon meal at 18.5%, with rapeseed oil supplying the added fat. This genuinely is built on one animal. Fish meal of this kind is a concentrated protein source, since almost all the water has already gone, and it carries the amino acids and minerals of the fish with it. Rice at 19.5% still sits above the salmon in the order.

The digestive kit is shared. Chicory root extract supplies FOS, and mannan-oligosaccharides join it at 0.1% each, both prebiotics that give the large intestine's friendly bacteria something to work on. Brewers yeast sits alongside them, with yucca extract at the end, included largely for the smell of what the garden receives. Linseed brings plant-form omega 3, at 2.5% in the everyday recipe and 0.5% in the salmon.

The vitamin and trace mineral panel is identical across both bags and printed in full. Vitamin E is at 110 mg per kilo, zinc at 100 mg, iron at 60 mg, manganese at 25 mg, copper at 5.00 mg, iodine at 1.00 mg and selenium at 0.15 mg. Vitamins A and D3 are dosed in international units beside them. The metals come as oxides and sulphates rather than chelates, forms a dog absorbs a little less readily, and the selenium is sodium selenite, the plainer of the two sources permitted in pet food.

The salmon recipe replaces every animal entry with salmon meal at 18.5% and takes its added fat from rapeseed oil, with rice up at 19.5% and linseed down to 0.5%. It is the leaner of the pair at 8.0% fat, and the only one here that a dog kept to a single animal source can eat. Its label declares no moisture figure, so the dry matter column assumes the 8% standard for a dry food.

The everyday recipe is £3.00 a kilo, sold in 3kg and 15kg sacks. The salmon recipe is £3.27 a kilo in a 15kg sack.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 256 grams a day of the everyday recipe, or 257 grams of the salmon. That works out at £0.77 and £0.84 a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The everyday label's own chart asks 240 to 355 grams for dogs between 15kg and 25kg, so let the waistline settle any difference.