Bakers Meaty Meals Adult: Meaty Meals Adult Chicken Dry Dog Food review

Both recipes land in our Poor band, two bands below the Good band where most adult dry foods settle. The gap is almost entirely about naming. The animal content, the added fats and part of the plant side are all listed as families, so there is no telling which meat, which grain or which oil went into the bag. Protein finishes at 23.5% of dry matter with carbohydrate at 51.8%. None of that stops it feeding a healthy adult dog with no particular sensitivities. Every vitamin and trace mineral carries a printed dose.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals (wholegrains 51%), Meat and animal derivatives (of which 4% chicken), Glycerol, Oils and fats, Minerals, Vegetable protein extracts, Derivatives of vegetable origin

Cereals lead, declared as wholegrains at 51%. That umbrella covers everything from the finest grain to the roughest, so there is no way to tell whether the bag in your hand leans on rice, wheat, maize or a mixture. The blend can move from batch to batch. Wholegrain is at least a helpful signal, since a whole grain keeps the fibre and micronutrients that milling takes out.

The animal content is listed as meat and animal derivatives, the legal term covering the fleshy parts and carcass products of slaughtered warm-blooded land animals. It is a wide category, not an automatically low one, and plenty of decent foods have used broad wording for their own reasons. Only 4% of this recipe is pinned to the beef or chicken on the front. Protein converts to 23.5% of dry matter, a gentle level for a dry food.

Glycerol earns its place third on the list. It is a humectant, there to hold water inside the kibble, which is why moisture is declared at 15% and why the pieces stay soft and slightly tacky instead of snapping. For a dog that has always shunned hard biscuit, that texture is the entire appeal of this range.

Oils and fats, vegetable protein extracts and derivatives of vegetable origin close the list, and each of those is a family name, not an ingredient. Vegetable protein extract is the one worth understanding: it tops the protein figure up with plant material, so the 20% on the analysis panel is not all coming from the animal side.

The vitamin and mineral panel is fully dosed in print: vitamin A at 17500 IU, vitamin D3 at 1000 IU and vitamin E at 83 mg per kilo. The minerals read zinc at 100 mg, iron at 72 mg, copper at 8.0 mg, manganese at 5.5 mg, iodine at 1.8 mg and selenium at 0.17 mg. They arrive as sulphates and oxides, the plainer forms that a dog takes up a little less readily. The selenium is sodium selenite, the more widely used of the two sources permitted in pet food, with selenised yeast the one that appears on fuller labels.

The chicken bag. Chicken is the 4% named within the meat and animal derivatives, and the rest of the recipe, along with the whole analysis panel, is identical to the beef version.

Sold in 1kg and 2.7kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at about 256 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own table asks 200 to 370 grams for dogs between 10kg and 25kg, so let the waistline settle any disagreement between the two.