Ava Sensitive Skin and Stomach Adult: Chicken review

Both varieties come out in our Good band, level with the typical adult dry food, and the chicken finishes the higher of the two. Nothing exotic creates the gap; it is earned with clean labelling, a large named protein share and a dosed mineral panel. The transparency pillar reads Outstanding on both bags, which is precisely the quality you want from a food sold on sensitivity.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (48%) (Chicken Meal 20.5%, Chicken 19%, Chicken Fat 6%, Chicken Gravy 2.5%), Tapioca (20%), Sweet Potato (18.5%), Beet Pulp (6%), Brewers' Yeast, Salmon Oil, Minerals, Chicory Root Extract (as a source of Prebiotic Fructooligosaccharide) (0.16%), Yeasts (as a source of Beta-glucans and Prebiotic Mannanoligosaccharide) (0.11%), Yucca Extract (0.02%), Glucosamine (0.02%), Chondroitin (0.015%), Cranberry Extract (0.01%), Green Tea Extract (0.005%), Pomegranate Extract (0.005%)

The two bags share one construction. Chicken leads its recipe at 48%, split across meal, fresh chicken, fat and gravy; white fish leads the other at 38.5% as freshly prepared fish, fish meal and stock. The dried meal share does the heavy lifting in both, since baking drives the water off fresh meat before it ever reaches the bag. Both labels print the split, and neither hides behind one headline figure.

Tapioca and sweet potato replace grain as the starch. Sweet potato brings fibre and micronutrients with it, while tapioca is close to pure starch, chosen precisely because it is bland and rarely upsets anything. On a sensitivity recipe that blandness is a feature, not a shortcut.

Digestive support comes in layers: beet pulp for gentle fermentable fibre, chicory root extract as one prebiotic and yeast derived mannanoligosaccharides as a second. Glucosamine and chondroitin appear at trace level, and cranberry, green tea and pomegranate extracts close the list as a small antioxidant flourish.

Salmon oil is the skin and coat engine, supplying preformed omega 3s that plant oils only offer indirectly. It appears in both recipes, which is good news for coats but means the chicken bag is not single animal in the strictest sense; a chicken only elimination trial cannot be run on it. A fish based trial is a different matter, since the white fish variety keeps its animal content entirely to fish.

The added trace minerals arrive mostly as chelates, generally the more absorbable form, with zinc dosed at 64.2 mg per kilo, the mineral skin depends on most. Carbohydrate converts to 46.3% of dry matter in the chicken bag and 52.1% in the white fish, either side of the 46.2% typical for adult dry food.

Chicken leads this bag at 48%, the larger animal share of the pair, and the recipe runs richer with fat at 15.5%. For dogs whose sensitivity is the stomach rather than the protein itself, it is the natural first pick, and it comes in the big bag format.

The chicken variety comes to £3.73 a kilo from its 15kg bag, and the white fish to £6.84 a kilo from a 2kg bag.

Take about 840 kcal a day as the maintenance need for a 15kg adult in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard estimate). That comes to roughly 222 grams and £0.83 a day on the chicken, or 240 grams and £1.64 a day on the white fish.