Belcando Adult Iberico and Rice review

Our Good band is where it lands, level with the typical adult dry food, and the substance is what puts it there. A named, percentaged animal with its offal declared, a fully dosed additive panel and a value pillar that reads Good all pull in the same direction, and nothing on the label pulls against them.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh Iberian pork, liver, spleen, kidneys (30%); Rice (29%); Dried Iberian pork protein (12.5%); Fish meal from sea fish (9%); Oat flour; Pea flour; Dried baker's yeast; Dried carob bean gum; Bean meal (Vicia faba); Grape seed expeller; Chia seeds (1.5%); Salmon oil (1.5%); Hydrolyzed yeast; Flaxseed; Thistle oil (1%); Dicalcium phosphate; Sodium chloride; Potassium chloride; Dried herbs (total: 0.2%; Nettle leaf, Gentian root, Centaury, Chamomile, Fennel, Caraway, Mistletoe, Yarrow, Blackberry leaves); Yucca schidigera

Iberian pork leads at 30% fresh, and the label names its parts: meat, liver, spleen and kidneys. Offal can read alarming to owners and delicious to dogs, and nutritionally it earns its place, liver in particular being dense in vitamins and trace minerals. The oven drives off most of the water in fresh meat. That leaves the 12.5% dried Iberian pork protein anchoring the finished kibble, with protein converting to a solid 26.7% of dry matter.

Pork deserves its moment. It remains rare in dog food, which makes it a useful change of animal for dogs that have been round the houses with the usual proteins. It is digestible too, and popular with the dogs themselves. The 9% fish meal behind it is there to round out the amino acids rather than to turn this into a fish dinner.

Rice at 29% with oat flour and pea flour behind it carries the starch, so grain is part of the deal. Estimated carbohydrate comes to 48.6% of dry matter, a whisker over the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. Bean meal and baker's yeast fill out the plant side.

The oil line-up is unusually varied for a food at this level: 1.5% salmon oil, 1% thistle oil, flaxseed and 1.5% chia seeds between them cover animal and plant omega 3s. The 0.2% dried herb pinch is tradition rather than treatment, and taurine arrives dosed at 500 mg, an amino acid with a well-earned reputation for supporting the heart.

£4.02 a kilo, with a 4kg bag to trial it and a 12.5kg bag once it has won the dog over.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, expect roughly 248 grams and about £1.00 a day, worked from the standard maintenance estimate of around 840 kcal daily (110 × bodyweight^0.75). The bag's own table asks 200 grams for that dog, so let the waistline referee any disagreement.