Bakers Small Dog: Rich In Beef With Country Vegetables review

Two of the three varieties read Poor on our scale, with Sensitive Tummy a step up in our Average band, while the typical adult dry food earns a Good reading. Little of that gap comes from the analysis, which is unremarkable in a perfectly ordinary way; most of it comes from labels that group their grains, their meats and their oils into categories. Protein and processing sits at Poor across the range, with nutritional balance Average and transparency Good or better on every bag. If your small dog is doing well on it, nothing here says stop; it simply says the bag keeps its secrets.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals (wholegrains* 47%), Meat and animal derivatives (of which 4% beef), Derivatives of vegetable origin (of which 2.9% dried beet pulp), Oils and fats, Glycerol, Vegetable protein extracts, Minerals, Vegetables* (of which 0.3% dried pea and 0.3% dried carrot), Spirulina* (0.2%), *Natural ingredients, equivalent to 4% rehydrated vegetables

In the Rich In Beef and Rich In Chicken recipes, wholegrain cereals stand at 47% with the named meat at 4% inside the meat and animal derivatives entry. Estimated carbohydrate converts to 47.2% of dry matter, near the 46.2% typical for the category, and protein to 27.5%.

The Sensitive Tummy variety rearranges rather than reinvents. Chicken stays at 4%, and dried chicory root arrives at 0.5% as a prebiotic aimed at the gut's friendly bacteria. Our carbohydrate estimate for it runs at 48.4% of dry matter using an assumed 8% moisture.

Every variety carries the same garnish: 0.3% dried pea, 0.3% dried carrot and 0.2% spirulina, together equivalent to 4% of vegetables once rehydrated, as the labels themselves point out.

Oils and fats appear on all three lists without a species or plant attached, and glycerol features for texture. Mineral support comes in familiar sulphate forms, each dose printed, with sodium selenite as the selenium source.

Rich In Beef names beef in the 4% slot and is the only member sold in a 10kg bag, a practical pick for a household of several little dogs.

The Rich In Beef comes in 1.1kg, 2.85kg and 10kg bags, and the Rich In Chicken in 1.1kg and 2.85kg. The Sensitive Tummy comes in a single 2.7kg bag, which stood at £2.29 a kilo when we checked.

On the Sensitive Tummy recipe that translates to about £0.54 a day for a 15kg dog in moderate condition, taking the standard maintenance estimate of around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). A genuinely small dog will of course need far less.