Canine Choice Adult Large: Chicken review

All three varieties land together in our Excellent band, a step ahead of the Good band where the typical adult dry food settles, and every bag reads Outstanding on transparency, with value Excellent to match. The spread between the three is small, so let your dog's history with each meat decide rather than anything on our side of the page.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh chicken (40%), sweet potato (16%), dehydrated chicken (15%), peas (9.5%), apple pulp (6%), hydrolyzed chicken liver (5%), dehydrated carrot (0.32% equivalent to 3% carrots), dehydrated cranberry (0.08% equivalent to 0.75% cranberries), chicken fat, brewer's yeast, fish oil, minerals, chicory (source of fos), mannan-oligosaccharides, camomile, parsley, rosehips, sea algae, rosemary, cloves, glucosamine (350 mg/kg), cartilage (a source of chondroitin 250 mg/kg), yucca schidigera.

Every recipe is built the same way. A fresh share of 40% to 44% opens each label, the same animal returns dried at 11% to 15%, and a hydrolysed liver or fish entry at 5% completes the meat block. Cooking takes most of the weight out of fresh meat, so the dried entries quietly do much of the protein work. The finished figures land between 28.3% and 29.3% protein on a dry matter basis.

Sweet potato at 14% to 16% and peas at 7% to 9.5% shoulder the starch, with apple pulp adding fibre. Carbohydrate settles between 42.2% and 42.5% of dry matter, under the 46.2% typical for adult dry food though higher than the meat-heavy front of the label might have you guess.

The extras are where the large breed thinking shows. Glucosamine at 350 mg/kg comes with cartilage supplying chondroitin at 250 mg/kg, brewer's yeast for its B vitamins, and prebiotic support from chicory and mannan-oligosaccharides. The herb tail from camomile down to yucca is seasoning.

Chicken fat runs through every recipe and fish oil through two of them. Both are sound nutritional choices, though they soften each variety's single-meat billing at the edges. That only becomes a live issue if you are managing a diagnosed sensitivity.

Fresh chicken at 40% with dehydrated chicken at 15% and hydrolysed chicken liver at 5%. Its printed additive panel is the fullest of the three, including a Bacillus subtilis probiotic alongside the standard vitamins and minerals, and its carrot and cranberry entries are spelt out with their fresh equivalents.

The chicken and lamb recipes are £5.42 a kilo and the salmon £3.24, all in the one 12kg bag.

For a 15kg adult in moderate condition that means roughly 221 grams a day, £1.20 on the chicken or lamb and £0.72 on the salmon. That is built on the standard 840 kcal maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75). A genuinely large dog eats more, and the label's own table starts at 320 grams for a 30kg dog and tops out at 790 grams at 100kg.