Arkwrights Extra: Sensitive Chicken review

Both varieties sit in our Poor band, while the typical adult dry food lands in our Good band. The gap is mostly about declaration: unnamed cereals, meat described largely as derivatives, and an analysis that leans on estimates where the label goes quiet. None of that says a dog will do badly on it, and plenty of dogs do well; it says the label gives us little to verify, and our scoring rewards labels that show their workings.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, meat and animal derivatives (26% including 14% chicken), oils and fats, vegetable protein extracts (maize gluten), minerals, FOS (0.2%), yucca extract.

Cereals lead both labels and are declared as exactly that, cereals. It is a legal category term, not a recipe entry. The maker therefore has room to vary the grain mix from batch to batch. The analysis shows where the weight sits: carbohydrate converts to 49.5% of dry matter on the beef recipe and an estimated 52.1% on the chicken, against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food.

The meat arrives as meat and animal derivatives, another category term covering various parts of various animals. Each variety pins a share to a named species, 14% beef on one and 14% chicken within a 26% animal share on the other, and leaves the remainder open. Most dogs will never notice. On a strict exclusion plan, though, the label needs a careful read first.

Vegetable protein extracts sit behind the meat on both lists, lifting the protein figure the way plant concentrates do. The chicken variety names its source as maize gluten; the beef variety leaves the source open.

The added micronutrition is properly dosed in print: vitamins A, D3 and E with a full run of trace elements behind them. Part of the zinc in the beef recipe is chelated at 18 mg/kg, the form a dog absorbs most easily. The Sensitive Chicken recipe adds FOS at 0.2%, a prebiotic fibre, with yucca extract alongside, the pair the maker leans on for its sensitive billing.

For all the category terms, the analysis reads as a steady everyday kibble: moderate protein, fat declared at 10% on both recipes, and fibre and ash in ordinary territory. Fed to a dog that gets on with it, it does the plain job it sets out to do.

The Sensitive Chicken recipe names chicken at 14% within a 26% meat and derivatives share, and backs its billing with FOS at 0.2% and yucca extract. Maize gluten is the named vegetable protein here, worth knowing for a dog kept off maize. The label does not declare moisture, so the dry-matter figures assume a standard 8%.

£1.33 a kilo, sold in a 15kg bag in both varieties.

As a guide, feeding works out at around £0.34 a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own guide runs from 200 grams a day for a 10kg dog up to 680 grams for a 45kg dog.