Burns Choice: Chicken & Maize review

In our banding it comes out Average, one step under the Good band the typical adult dry food occupies. Transparency reads Outstanding, nutritional balance Poor, protein and processing Average, and value keeps step with the overall placing. The arithmetic of a 72% maize recipe explains the gap: the meat share is concentrated but small, and carbohydrate runs well above the typical 46.2% of dry matter. What a band cannot capture is the value of total clarity, which for an intolerant dog can matter more than the placing.

Ingredients, as declared: Wholegrain Maize (72%), Chicken Meal (17%), Peas, Chicken Oil, Seaweed, Minerals

Wholegrain maize at 72% is most of the food. Maize is a nutritionally reasonable cereal that most dogs digest well once cooked, and it carries none of wheat's gluten baggage. At this level it defines the recipe's character, and the energy comes largely from starch.

Chicken meal at 17% is a concentrated dried protein, weighed after its water has gone, which is how a modest-sounding figure supports a protein reading of 20.1% of dry matter. With chicken oil as the fat source, the entire animal side stays with one species, a genuinely uncommon trait in a dry food.

Peas add plant protein and a little fibre, and seaweed brings trace minerals, iodine among them. That is the whole list.

Two additive details stand out. Taurine is included at 1000 mg per kilo, and the selenium is supplied as selenised yeast, the organic form usually considered better absorbed than the selenite most labels use. Copper, manganese and zinc all come as amino acid chelates.

£5.67 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 6kg bags. As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to about £1.43 a day at roughly 252 grams, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The printed table lists 140 grams for a 10kg dog and 280 grams for a 20kg dog, so split the difference and watch the waist.