Canine Choice Adult Small: Chicken review

All three flavours finish in our Excellent band. For context, the typical adult dry food comes in a band lower, in Good, and the spread across this trio is small enough that flavour preference can safely decide it.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh chicken (36%), dehydrated chicken (19.5%), sweet potato (18%), peas (7%), hydrolyzed chicken liver (5%), apple pulp (4%), dehydrated carrot (0.32% equivalent to 3% of carrots), dehydrated cranberries (0.08% equivalent to 0.75% cranberries), chicken fat, brewer's yeast, fish oil, minerals, chicory (source of fos), mannan-oligosaccharides (mos), camomile, parsley, rosehips, sea algae, rosemary, cloves, cartilage (a source of chondroitin 200 mg/kg), glucosamine (300 mg/kg), yucca schidigera.

The chicken version opens with 36% fresh chicken and 19.5% dehydrated, and the lamb and salmon follow the same fresh-plus-dehydrated pattern. Cooking drives the water out of fresh meat, so dehydrated meat is the quiet workhorse of a kibble. Here it is present in a share big enough to matter. Protein converts to between 31.5% and 32.6% of dry matter across the trio.

Carbohydrate is estimated at 35.0% to 36.9% of dry matter, usefully below the 46.2% typical of adult dry food, with sweet potato and peas supplying it grain free. One oddity: the lamb recipe lists sweet potato at just 1%, leaning on peas and pea protein instead.

Joint support is printed rather than implied, glucosamine at 300 mg/kg with chondroitin at 200 mg/kg from cartilage, and chicory FOS plus MOS look after the gut. In each recipe the natural palatant is a hydrolysed entry from the lead meat.

Chicken fat provides the cooking fat throughout and fish oil the omegas in the chicken and lamb, so the named meat leads but never travels alone. That is a quality-of-life detail for most dogs and a dealbreaker only for strict avoiders.

The botanical tail from camomile to yucca is a garnish, present at trace level. What you are paying attention to on this label is the meat structure, and it holds up.

The chicken pairs 36% fresh with 19.5% dehydrated and gives sweet potato its biggest role in the trio at 18%. Its label also lists a Bacillus subtilis probiotic among the additives.

All three flavours are £5.71 a kilo, each sold in a single 7kg bag size.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would get through around 210 grams a day, about £1.20, taking the standard maintenance estimate of 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75) as the basis. Genuinely small dogs need far less: the chicken label's own guide runs from 14 grams a day for a 0.5kg dog up to 135 grams at 10kg.