Chappie Dry Food: Made With Chicken review

Our Average band is where this one finishes, and the shape of the recipe is what puts it there. Cereals take the top line, the meat is declared as a category with a small named share inside it, and both the fat and the vegetable matter are described by family. The typical adult dry food sits a band above that, in our Good band. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Poor on either bag.

What a score cannot pick up is the thing owners actually value here. This is a lean, moderate protein kibble with a very short list, made to the same shape year after year, and plenty of dogs have lived long and comfortable lives on it. Read the band as a comment on how plain the recipe is, not as a warning about the food.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals (including 4% wholewheat* 4%), meat and animal derivatives (15%, including chicken* 4% ), oils and fats, derivatives of vegetable origin, minerals, *natural ingredients.

Cereals lead both bags, with whole wheat named at 4% inside that entry. Cereals as a term stretches across every grain there is, from the best to the plainest, and because the type is not pinned down the mix can shift between batches. Grain carries this recipe, and the estimate says so: carbohydrate at 59.8% of dry matter in the beef, 58.8% in the chicken, against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food.

The meat entry reads meat and animal derivatives at 15%, of which 4% is named, beef in one bag and chicken in the other. That umbrella covers the fleshy parts of slaughtered land animals along with everything derived from processing the carcass. It can be good material or ordinary material, and the pack keeps that to itself. In the beef recipe protein finishes at 21.7% of dry matter, and the chicken reads 22.0%.

Oils and fats, and derivatives of vegetable origin, are the two remaining entries, and both name a family instead of an ingredient. That is the honest limit of this label. You can see the shape of the recipe clearly enough, but not what has been used to build it. That missing detail is the one an owner tracking an intolerance would want most.

Fat is the figure that makes this food what it is. The beef reads 8.0% and the chicken 7.0%. That is genuinely lean for a dry food, and it is the reason so many owners reach for Chappie when a dog needs something plain sitting in their stomach. Fibre is modest too, 2.0% in the beef against 3.5% in the chicken. Neither bag leans on bulk to fill a dog up.

The chicken bag names chicken at 4% inside the same 15% meat and animal derivatives entry. It is the leaner of the two, 7.0% fat with fibre up at 3.5%. Its cereals include wholewheat as well, so the two recipes are close cousins rather than one being the wheat free alternative to the other.

The beef is £2.22 a kilo and the chicken £1.96 a kilo, both sold in 3 kg and 15 kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at about 243 grams a day, which comes to £0.54 a day on the beef and £0.48 on the chicken. That assumes a daily requirement of roughly 840 kcal, taken from the standard maintenance sum of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. The beef bag's own table asks 250 grams for a dog of that size, so the two sit close together.