Belcando Finest Senior Grain-Free review

This food sits in our Average band, while the typical adult dry food lands in our Good band. The gap is construction, with nothing alarming in it. Protein finishes on the low side once the water has cooked out of the fresh meat, carbohydrate runs above what is typical for a dry food, and several working entries name no species. None of that stops it doing the job it was designed for. Fed to a small or medium senior that gets on with poultry, it reads gentle rather than deficient.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh poultry meat (40%); Amaranth (19%); Potato starch; Pea flour; Hydrolyzed poultry liver (4.5%); Low-ash dried poultry protein (2.5%); Ground sea zooplankton (Krill, 2.5%); Hydrolyzed gelatin (2.5%); Dried baker's yeast (2.5%); Grape seed expeller; Dried carob bean gum; De-sugared dried beet pulp; Fish meal from marine fish (2%); Poultry fat; Chia seeds; Calcium carbonate; Dicalcium phosphate; Potassium chloride; Sodium chloride; Dried herbs (total: 0.2%; Nettle leaf, Gentian root, Centaury, Chamomile, Fennel, Caraway, Mistletoe, Yarrow, Blackberry leaves); Yucca schidigera

Fresh poultry meat leads at 40%. Fresh is the operative word, since most of that weight will leave in the oven as water. The dried backup is modest, low-ash poultry protein at 2.5%. Protein in the finished kibble converts to 21.7% of dry matter, gentle for a dry food. Carbohydrate is estimated at 54.1% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. That puts a good deal of the load on the plant side.

Amaranth at 19% is the most distinctive choice on the label. A pseudocereal is not a true grain, so the grain-free promise holds. It carries more protein than cereal does, and no gluten at all. Potato starch and pea flour sit behind it as the binders.

The senior thinking shows in the smaller entries. Krill at 2.5% brings marine omega 3s, with chia seeds adding plant ones. Hydrolysed gelatin at 2.5% is a collagen source aimed at ageing joints. Taurine arrives dosed at 500 mg, an amino acid that matters for the heart. Fibre converts to 4.8% of dry matter, with de-sugared beet pulp doing that work, and calcium works out at 0.89% of dry matter, a comfortable adult level.

Grape seed expeller may stop a careful reader in their tracks, grapes being famously off the menu for dogs. It is the fruit that carries the danger, not the seed. The pressed residue used here is an antioxidant source, and there is nothing to worry about in it. The herb blend at 0.2% is there for seasoning, and the label is honest enough to print the percentage that says so.

The one honest limitation is that the poultry stays poultry all the way down. Chicken, duck, goose or turkey: the family name covers all four, and the fresh meat, the liver and the fat give nothing more precise. Most dogs will never notice, and the hydrolysed liver at 4.5% is there as a palatant to keep an older appetite engaged. It only becomes a live question if you are trying to rule a particular bird in or out.

£6.87 a kilo, sold in 4kg and 12.5kg bags.

As a guide, feeding works out at about £1.69 a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Where that differs from the label's own table, which suggests 200 grams a day for the same dog, let the waistline decide.