Autarky Mature Lite Dry Delicious Chicken review

This feed comes out in our Average band, a step under the Good band the typical adult dry food holds. The pillars land unevenly, with nutritional balance Poor at one end and transparency Good at the other, and protein and processing between them at Average. Dilution is the whole explanation. Cereal fills most of the recipe and protein runs low. The poultry is only partly named, and while none of that is dangerous, our scoring counts all of it. Taken as what the bag says it is, a light feed for an unfussy older dog, it delivers at face value.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize, Poultry meal (min 14% chicken), Rice (min 5%), Unmolassed beet pulp, Chicken liver, Alfalfa, Peas, Chicken fat, Yeast, Maize gluten, Linseed, Carrot, Glucosamine, Milk thistle, Seaweed, Nettle, Marigold, Mint, Fenugreek, Thyme, Carob pod meal, Rosemary, Blackcurrant, Pomegranate, Rosehip, Spinach, Beetroot, Aniseed, Turmeric, Dandelion, Ginger, Oregano (min 0.4% herbs)

Maize opens the list with rice adding a 5% declared minimum. Between them the cereals push the carbohydrate estimate to 66.3% of dry matter, a long way past the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. That is the lite mechanism at work: less fat and protein, more grain.

The poultry meal guarantees chicken at 14%, with chicken liver and chicken fat further down doing what they always do for appetite. The rest of the meal's contents stay at family level, any domestic bird permitted.

Fat at 6.5% as fed is genuinely low, and for a portly senior that is the point. Unmolassed beet pulp supplies the fibre that helps a lighter meal still feel like a meal.

Maize gluten tops up the protein from plants, an economy worth knowing about with sensitive dogs, while linseed and alfalfa are more welcome sights, the linseed bringing plant omega 3s.

Glucosamine makes the list without a printed dose. Read it as a nod to ageing joints, not a measured intervention. The herb tail at its declared 0.4% minimum closes things in the brand's usual style.

£2.99 a kilo, in bags of 2kg and 12kg.

Worked from the standard maintenance basis of 110 kcal per kilo of metabolic bodyweight, a 15kg adult in moderate condition would eat about 256 grams a day at roughly £0.77. The label's own table covers dogs of 10 to 25kg, at 180 to 360 grams.