Chapel Farm Original 20 review

The typical adult dry food reaches our Good band; this recipe finishes a step below it, in our Average band. The shortfall is mostly a transparency story. Umbrella terms cover the grain and most of the meat and the build leans heavily on carbohydrate, so protein and processing and transparency each read Average and nutritional balance Poor. None of it points to anything harmful, and where a plain chicken and rice bowl suits your dog, this food can still do its job perfectly well.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals (4% rice), Meat & animal derivatives (22% chicken), Oils & fats (1% Scottish salmon oil & 0.5% omega 3 fatty acids), Vegetables (2.5% beet pulp), Minerals and Yeast.

Chicken is the anchor, named at 22% within the meat and animal derivatives entry. Chicken is an easily digested, widely accepted protein, but the rest of that entry stays anonymous, so the label cannot tell you which other animals contribute or in what amounts.

The cereals entry works the same way. Rice is pinned at 4%, one of the gentler grains, while the bulk of the starch goes unnamed and could move between wheat, maize or anything else from batch to batch. That flexibility is common in this corner of the market, but it is the main reason a dog with a suspected grain sensitivity is hard to match to this label. The analysis reflects the build: carbohydrate is estimated at 53.0%, or 58.3% of dry matter, where the typical adult dry food runs at 46.2%.

Scottish salmon oil at 1% with a further 0.5% omega 3 fatty acids is the recipe's best flourish, useful support for skin and coat. Beet pulp at 2.5% supplies steady fibre. The yeast carries mannan oligosaccharides, a prebiotic the good bacteria in the gut feed on.

The additive panel is properly dosed in print, and the zinc arrives partly as a chelate of amino acids, the form generally absorbed more readily. Selenium comes as sodium selenite, the standard choice across most of the market.

£1.68 a kilo, sold in a single 15kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 241 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which comes to £0.40 a day. The label's own guide asks 200 to 400 grams for dogs between 10kg and 25kg, so start there and adjust to the waistline.