Chudleys Grain Free: Chicken & Vegetables review

A place in our Good band puts this recipe level with the typical adult dry food. Protein and processing reads Good, helped by a guaranteed chicken minimum, and value sits at Good alongside it, while nutritional balance and transparency settle on Average, the starch share still doing plenty of work.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken meal, Dried peas, Dried potatoes, Chicken fat, Freshly prepared chicken (min 35% total chicken), Beet pulp, Sweet potatoes, Minerals, Lucerne, Full fat linseed, Salmon oil (source of omega 3 fatty acids), Dried apple (0.4%), Fructose and mannan oligosaccharides, Glucosamine, Seaweed, Sage (0.1%), Milk thistle, Dried carrots, Green lipped mussel, Yucca schidigera, Blackcurrant, Rosehip, Pomegranate, Kale, Beetroot (min 44% total vegetables).

Chicken meal opens the list, with freshly prepared chicken and chicken fat bringing the total guaranteed chicken to a minimum of 35%. Leading with meal rather than fresh meat is quietly honest: the water is already gone, so the headline survives cooking intact and feeds through into a protein figure of 24%, or 26.1% of dry matter.

The label carries no grain at all. Dried peas, dried potatoes and sweet potatoes do the starch, and the vegetables in total are guaranteed at a minimum of 44%. Sweet potato in particular is a well regarded carbohydrate source. Even so, estimated carbohydrate converts to 47.3% of dry matter, close to the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. Grain free does not mean carbohydrate free.

Salmon oil supplies the marine omega 3s, backed by full fat linseed on the plant side. Glucosamine and green lipped mussel cover joints, though without printed doses, and fructose and mannan oligosaccharides from yeast act as prebiotics for the gut.

The long tail from kale to pomegranate is itemised down to fractions of a percent, which is more honesty than most labels manage even if none of it moves the nutritional needle. Chicken and vegetables are what this recipe runs on, and both are pinned in print.

£3.41 a kilo, sold as a 14kg sack with a 2kg bucket alongside.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, allow about 231 grams a day, on the basis of roughly 840 kcal daily (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which makes the day £0.79. The label itself suggests 160 to 310 grams across the 10kg to 25kg bracket.