Canine Choice Premium Adult: Lamb & Rice review

Each of the three recipes earns our Good band, level with the typical adult dry food, and it does so on sensible construction: a properly declared meat share, itemised percentages and dosed extras.

Ingredients, as declared: 40% Lamb (dried lamb 26%, freshly prepared lamb 14%), rice (30%), barley (16%), peas (5%), rapeseed oil (4%), beet pulp (3%), linseed (1%), minerals, chicory (source of prebiotic fos) (1000mg/kg), mannanoligosaccharides (source of prebiotic mos) (1000mg/kg), turmeric (100mg/kg), parsley (100 mg/kg), yucca (100mg/kg), dried cranberry (100mg/kg).

Putting the dried meat first at 26% is quietly the right call. With its water already gone, dried meat delivers several times the protein of fresh gram for gram. The 14% freshly prepared behind it covers palatability. Protein converts to between 25.5% and 28.3% of dry matter across the range.

Rice at 30% and barley at 15% or 16% carry the starch, with peas at 5% and beet pulp at 3% behind them. Estimated carbohydrate runs at 47.2% to 47.8% of dry matter, close to the 46.2% found in the typical adult dry food. The energy split here is a conventional one.

Linseed at 1% is the omega source, a plant one, and that is what keeps the whole range fish free. Its omega 3 arrives in a form dogs convert slowly, so give skin and coat a few weeks to answer rather than a few days.

Chicory FOS and MOS are both printed at 1000 mg/kg, so the prebiotic pair is properly dosed. Turmeric, parsley, yucca and cranberry sit at 100 mg/kg apiece, and printing numbers that small is an honest way of saying they are a garnish.

The mineral panel is otherwise standard. Part of the zinc arrives as a chelate, an easier form for a dog's gut to absorb.

Lamb is the gentlest in energy at 324 kcal per 100g, with rapeseed oil supplying the fat so that lamb stays the only animal on the list. Its ash reads higher than its siblings at 11.4% of dry matter, the mineral load that tends to come with dried red meat.

£5.00 a kilo across all three recipes, sold in 2kg and 10kg bags.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at about 224 grams and £1.12 a day on the chicken. The turkey comes to 248 grams and £1.24, the lamb to 259 grams and £1.29. Each is figured from the standard 840 kcal maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75).