Bakers Edward Baker Small Dog review

This lands in our Average band, while the middle of the adult dry market reads Good on our scale. The headline is genuinely respectable, a named dried meat in first place, with nutritional balance and transparency both reading Good and protein and processing a step behind at Average. What holds it back is the company the turkey keeps: unnamed fats, a soya protein topper and milling leftovers rather than whole grains. None of that makes it a hard food to feed, and a small dog already doing well on it has no reason to stop.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey Meal (28%), Wheat*, Corn*, Animal Fats, Soya Meal, Digest, Wheat Middlings*, Dried Beet Pulp, Dried Chicory Root*1 (0.5%), Minerals, Dried Carrot* (0.07%), Dried Spinach* (0.07%), Dried Parsley* (0.07%), *Natural Ingredients, 1Natural Prebiotic

Turkey meal at 28% is a stronger opening than it might look. Meal has had its water taken out before it goes in, so its weight survives cooking intact, and it gives the recipe a protein spine that converts to 29.7% of dry matter.

Wheat and corn do the binding, with wheat middlings behind them. Middlings are the fragments left over from flour milling, so this is not the whole grain, and wheat itself is among the more common triggers for grain-sensitive dogs. Estimated carbohydrate lands at 46.7% of dry matter, almost exactly where the typical adult dry food runs at 46.2%.

Soya meal tops up the protein figure, though a dog's gut takes less from soya than it does from meat, and soya is another ingredient that sensitive dogs sometimes struggle with. The animal fats and the digest, a cooked-down flavouring that makes kibble taste of something, are the two entries that name no species.

The gentler touches are real enough: dried beet pulp for fibre, chicory root at 0.5% as a prebiotic for the gut's friendly bacteria, and a pinch of carrot, spinach and parsley at 0.07% each. The last of those is garnish.

The added minerals arrive as standard sulphates, with selenium as sodium selenite and no chelated forms among them, and every dose is printed on the label.

Sold in a 2kg bag.

The label's own guide asks 35 to 110 grams a day for dogs up to 5kg, and 110 to 175 grams between 5kg and 10kg. As with any feed, let the waistline arbitrate.