Chapel Farm Invest 'N' Digest review

Our Good band is where this food settles, which is exactly where the typical adult dry food lands. That company makes sense when you look at the build: cereals do much of the carrying and the analysis is middle of the road. The named lamb meal and the genuine digestive extras keep it honest. It is an everyday kibble scoring like one, with nothing on the label to be nervous about.

Ingredients, as declared: Wheat, Lamb meal (min 28%) Maize, Chicken fat, Lamb digest, Beet pulp, Minerals, Mannan oligosaccharides, Yucca Schidigera, Blackcurrant, Rosehip.

This is a cereal-led kibble: wheat opens the list and maize sits two places behind it. The analysis agrees, with carbohydrate converting to 48.3% of dry matter, a shade above the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. Between the two cereals sits the recipe's anchor, lamb meal at a declared minimum of 28%. Meal has been dried, so it packs more protein into the same weight than fresh meat does. Protein lands at 24.2% of dry matter here.

The digestive package is the point of the name. Beet pulp is a gentle, well-tolerated fibre with a long record for firming stools. Mannan oligosaccharides are a prebiotic that feeds the helpful bacteria in the gut. Yucca schidigera is on the label to take the edge off wind. One entry needs translating, though: lamb digest is not a digestive aid but a palatant, a cooked-down coating that makes the kibble taste properly of lamb.

Chicken fat carries the oil, and a named fat is worth something on a label, since plenty of makers settle for an anonymous animal fat instead. It does put a second species in the bowl, which is why the lamb on the front of the bag reads as a lead ingredient rather than a lamb-only promise.

Every entry in the added vitamin and mineral panel carries a dose. Part of the zinc arrives as a chelate, a form that absorbs more readily. Blackcurrant and rosehip close the list as a small flourish; that far down the label they are there for character, not nutrition. Judge this food on its meal, its cereals and its gut package, and the label is straightforward about all three.

£1.92 a kilo, from a single 15kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs roughly 234 grams a day, or around 45p a day, on about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). For the bigger dogs this food is aimed at, the label's own guide runs from 350 to 545 grams a day across the 25 to 45kg weight range.