Brit Care Mini Sensitive Grain Free review

The Good band is where this food comes out, with transparency reading Outstanding behind it, nutritional balance and value Good and protein and processing Average. The typical adult dry food settles in the same band, and what sets this one apart is earned quietly. There is one named meat at a meaningful share, no cereal, and estimated carbohydrate converting to 38.0% of dry matter against the typical 46.2%.

Ingredients, as declared: Venison (40%), yellow pea, chicken fat (preserved with tocopherols), chickpeas, buckwheat, dried apples, salmon oil (3%), linseed (3%), brewer's yeast, algae (0.5%, Ascophyllum nodosum), hydrolyzed crustacean shells (a source of glucosamine, 260 mg/kg), blueberries (230 mg/kg, source of polyphenols 70 mg/kg & flavonoids 30 mg/kg), cartilage extract (a source of chondroitin, 160 mg/kg), mannan-oligosaccharides (150 mg/kg), herbs & fruits (rosemary, cloves, citrus, curcuma, 150 mg/kg), fructo-oligosaccharides (100 mg/kg), yucca schidigera (100 mg/kg), inulin (90 mg/kg), milk thistle (75 mg/kg), sea buckthorn (75 mg/kg), chamomile (30 mg/kg), cloves (30 mg/kg), sage (25 mg/kg)

Venison at 40% is a distinctive lead. Deer meat digests easily, tastes good to most dogs and appears so rarely in dog food that it counts as a novel protein for the majority, which is the whole point of a sensitivity recipe. The label does not split fresh from dried, so allow for some of that 40% leaving as water in the oven.

Yellow pea, chickpeas and buckwheat provide the structure with no grain on the list, and dried apples contribute a little fruit fibre. Crude fibre is a low 2.0%, in keeping with a recipe that wants to sit gently in the stomach.

Chicken fat brings the energy and salmon oil at 3% the marine omega 3s, with linseed at 3% in support. Both are sound nutritional choices; they are also the reason the recipe cannot claim to contain deer and nothing else.

The functional additions are dosed in print: glucosamine at 260 mg/kg and chondroitin at 160 mg/kg for the joints, mannan-oligosaccharides at 150 mg/kg and fructo-oligosaccharides at 100 mg/kg for the gut. Inulin at 90 mg/kg adds more prebiotic fibre. Blueberries at 230 mg/kg, sea buckthorn and the trailing herbs are present at trace levels only.

The bags come in 0.4kg, 2kg and 7kg sizes at £5.71 a kilo.

Fed to a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, that means about 218 grams and £1.24 a day, using the usual maintenance estimate of roughly 840 kcal daily (110 × bodyweight^0.75). A more typical resident for this food, a 4kg to 6kg dog, is asked for 60 to 80 grams a day by the label's own table.