Briantos Adult Mini: Lamb & Rice review

Our scoring holds this one in the Average band, a band below the Good result the typical adult dry food manages. The shortfall is mostly about openness, with the lead protein named only as poultry, moisture absent from the label and maize gluten boosting the protein from the plant side. Fed to a healthy small dog with no sensitivities, it remains a serviceable everyday kibble.

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry meat meal, rice (20%), barley, maize, poultry fat, lamb meat meal (5%), dried beet pulp, maize gluten, protein hydrolysate, peas (dried), fish oil, dried brewer's yeast, sodium chloride, potassium chloride

Poultry meat meal opens the list. A meal is dried down before it goes in, so a single entry carries protein to 27.2% of dry matter. The naming is the weakness rather than the substance: poultry covers several birds, and the label never says which.

The lamb meat meal is declared at 5%, enough to flavour the food and justify the picture on the bag, not enough to define it. A dog choosing this for the taste of lamb will be happy; an owner choosing it to avoid poultry will not get what they came for.

Rice at 20% leads a grain line-up of barley and maize, with carbohydrate converting to an estimated 48.5% of dry matter, a shade above the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. Maize gluten then adds plant protein, a workmanlike top-up that a dog's body uses less well than meat protein.

The rest is sensible housekeeping: fish oil for omega 3s, dried beet pulp for fibre, brewer's yeast for B vitamins and a hydrolysate to sharpen the taste. The additive panel is dosed in print, and part of the zinc comes as a chelate, the better-absorbed form.

No moisture appears on the label, so the dry-matter figures here assume the usual 8% for kibble.

£3.49 a kilo, sold in a 1kg bag.

As a comparison point, our standard maintenance energy estimate puts a 15kg adult dog at about 232 grams and £0.81 a day, and a genuinely mini dog will need far less than that.