Arden Grange Mini Adult: Lamb & Rice review

A fraction separates the two varieties. Both varieties settle in our Good band, level with the typical adult dry food. The lamb keeps the slender edge, with the two matched pillar for pillar and transparency reading Outstanding on both bags.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb (lamb meat meal 29%, fresh lamb 5%), rice 26%, maize, refined chicken oil, beet pulp, whole dried egg, chicken digest, yeast, whole linseed, krill, minerals, prebiotic FOS, prebiotic MOS, yucca extract, glucosamine, MSM, chondroitin, cranberries, nucleotides.

Both varieties declare their meat the honest way round: the meal first, at 29% in the lamb and 27% in the chicken, with fresh meat at 5% in support. Meat meal has already lost its water before the recipe is mixed, so those headline figures survive cooking intact, and protein lands at 25% as fed in each.

Rice at 26% leads the starch with maize behind it. Carbohydrate converts to 43.0% of dry matter in the lamb and 46.2% in the chicken, the second figure sitting exactly on the typical value for adult dry food.

The support cast is classic Arden Grange: beet pulp for fibre, whole dried egg and krill for protein quality and omega fats, whole linseed alongside, then prebiotic FOS and MOS for the gut.

The joint trio of glucosamine, MSM and chondroitin makes the list in both varieties, though without printed doses on these labels, and cranberries with nucleotides close things out at trace level.

Lamb meat meal at 29% with 5% fresh lamb makes this the red meat pick, and the slightly richer of the pair at 16% fat. It is also the stronger scorer of the two, with a transparency pillar that reads Outstanding.

Both varieties come in 2kg and 6kg bags, with a 4 x 2kg multipack.

Using our standard reference of a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, feeding works out at about 220 grams a day of the lamb or 219 grams of the chicken. That assumes roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). A genuinely small dog needs far less; the label asks just 55 to 85 grams for dogs between 3kg and 5kg.