Burns Alert: Chicken & Brown Rice review

Both varieties come out in our Good band, exactly where the typical adult dry food also sits. What the recipe gains from a short, honest label and a named meat, it gives back through a heavy cereal load. Estimated carbohydrate is 60.2% of dry matter in the chicken version and 60.0% in the lamb. For a dog that does well on gentle, predictable food, matching the field is no failure.

Ingredients, as declared: Brown Rice (67%), Dried Chicken (20%), Oats, Peas, Salmon Oil (1%), Chicken Oil, Sunflower Oil, Seaweed (0.5%), Minerals, Green Tea Extract (0.01%), Blueberry Extract (0.01%).

Brown rice is the base of both: 67% of the chicken recipe, 58% of the lamb. It is one of the better cereals to build on, since it keeps its bran and with it more fibre and B vitamins than white rice. At these levels, though, the meat ends up in second place.

The meat itself is dried, 20% chicken or 22% lamb depending on the variety. The water is out of that meat before it is weighed, so both figures are concentrated ones you can trust. Each variety keeps to one named meat, though the oils bring other species in behind it.

The fat work is split across three oils. Marine omega 3s come from salmon oil at 1%, omega 6 from sunflower oil, and chicken oil is there for energy and taste. It is an effective trio for skin and coat, and it is also the reason neither variety is truly single-animal.

The signature flourishes are green tea extract and blueberry extract, each at 0.01%, both antioxidant sources at doses best read as a gesture. More substantial are the additive choices: taurine at 1000 mg per kilo, vitamin C at 50 mg, and copper, manganese and zinc all supplied as amino acid chelates for easier uptake.

Chicken at 20% dried, with brown rice higher here at 67%. It carries slightly less meat per bowl than the lamb but a marginally higher protein reading, at 20.0% as fed, and it is the variety offering a choice of bag sizes.

£4.79 a kilo for either variety. The chicken comes in 6kg and 12kg bags, the lamb in a 12kg bag. As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats 255 grams of the chicken at about £1.22 a day, or 263 grams of the lamb at about £1.26. The maths behind that is about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate).