Ci Foods Ci Tender Tums: Chicken & Rice review

The Average band is where our scoring places this food; the typical adult dry food finishes a step higher, in our Good band. The gap comes down to construction. The meat is a generic poultry meal rather than a named species, cereals do a large share of the carrying, and the recipe keeps to a plain, functional list. None of that is a warning for the dog this food is meant for. As a gentle, low-fat bowl for a sensitive adult stomach, it does what its name promises.

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry Meal (26%), Rice (26%), Barley, Oats, Poultry Fat, Sugar Beet Pulp, Fish Meal, Brewers Yeast, Minerals, Vitamins,Yucca Schidigera Extract 190mg/kg).

Poultry meal and rice share top billing at 26% each. Meal has already been dried down and concentrated, so gram for gram it carries more protein than fresh meat does. The analysis follows, with protein converting to 26.1% of dry matter. The catch is the word poultry itself. It covers a category of birds without naming one. Chicken, duck, goose or turkey are all possible, and the bird may change from batch to batch.

The variety is sold as Chicken & Rice, yet the ingredients panel itself only ever says poultry. For most dogs that difference is academic. It matters only if you need to know exactly which bird is in the bowl.

Rice leads the cereal side with barley and oats behind it, all gentle and well tolerated once cooked, which fits the easy-digestion brief. They do add up though, with carbohydrate estimated at 51.0% as fed, so a good share of the bowl's energy comes from starch.

Beet pulp is the fibre workhorse, a de-sugared pulp supplying both soluble and insoluble fibre for stool quality. Yucca extract is dosed at 190 mg/kg, an addition usually included to take the edge off wind and stool odour. Fish meal makes a quiet appearance too, a dense protein that earns its keep nutritionally while meaning the recipe carries fish as well as poultry.

Every added trace mineral comes with a printed dose. Iron and zinc are at 50 mg each, manganese at 35 mg, copper at 15 mg, iodine at 1 mg and selenium at 0.3 mg per kilo. Biotin for skin and coat is at 145 mcg.

£3.17 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 12kg bags, with the 2kg bags also available in packs of four.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at about 241 grams and £0.77 a day, based on a maintenance estimate of roughly 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75). Let the waistline arbitrate between that guide and the table on the bag.