Burns Sensitive Grain Free: Pork & Potato review

Weighed against the typical adult dry food, which occupies our Good band, this recipe finishes a band below it in Average. The single named animal and the honest fresh-versus-dried split work in its favour; the sheer size of the starch share works against it, and the two roughly cancel out. Transparency reads Outstanding, protein and processing Average and nutritional balance Poor. That is the profile of a food with a clear purpose and an ordinary construction.

Ingredients, as declared: Pork (34%) (including 22% Freshly Prepared Pork & 12% Dried Pork), Potato (27%), Maize, Pea Starch, Peas, Pork Fat, Seaweed (0.5%), Minerals.

Pork at 34% is declared the way it should be, as 22% freshly prepared and 12% dried. Most of that fresh weight is water, and baking drives it off. That makes the dried 12% weigh more in the bag than its place on the list suggests, and pork fat keeps the whole animal side on one species. Pork also carries a practical advantage: it appears in so few dog foods that most dogs have no history with it, which is exactly the clean slate a sensitivity feeder wants.

Now the awkward part. Third on the list, after the potato, sits maize, and maize is a grain by any ordinary definition. It is not a harmful ingredient, and cooked maize digests perfectly well in most dogs. What sits uncomfortably is the Grain Free name above it. An owner avoiding all cereals deserves to know the maize is there before trusting the front of the bag.

Potato at 27% leads the starch, with pea starch and whole peas in support. Add the maize and carbohydrate converts to an estimated 60.3% of dry matter, against the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. Protein finishes at 20.1% of dry matter, the gentle level Burns aims most of its recipes at.

Seaweed at 0.5% brings natural iodine, taurine is dosed at 1000mg per kilo, and the trace minerals come chelated with selenium as selenised yeast at 0.1mg. Ash converts to 8.2% of dry matter and calcium to 2.07%, slightly fuller readings that track the bone arriving with the dried pork, and no concern for a healthy adult.

£5.75 a kilo, in bags of 2kg, 6kg and 12kg.

On the standard maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75), a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs around 257 grams, which comes to £1.48 daily. The bag itself suggests 140 grams for a 10kg dog and 280 grams for a 20kg dog.