Cobbydog Kennel Mix review

Our reading lands this one in our Average band, and the word needs unpacking before it puts anyone off. Most adult dry foods finish in our Good band, and the gap here is almost entirely a transparency story. Cooked dried meats, meat meals and cooked cereal are categories rather than ingredients, no percentages are attached to anything, and a label that says so little cannot climb far with us. The analysis itself holds up, with protein converting to 26.1% of dry matter on a lean fat line. The band records how much the label leaves unsaid. Nothing in the bag itself reads as wrong.

Ingredients, as declared: A balanced mixture of cooked dried meats, meat meals, cooked cereal, vitamins, minerals proteins, fats and salts.

The entire recipe fits into one sentence on the bag: cooked dried meats, meat meals, cooked cereal, vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats and salts. Meat meal is nothing to fear in itself. It is the rendered, dried backbone of the dry food industry, a concentrated protein powder carrying more nutrition per gram than the fresh meat it came from. What this label withholds is which animals went into it, and that could change from batch to batch.

The cereal is unnamed too, and maize and wheat are both possibilities on a label written this loosely, so a dog that itches on one particular grain cannot be confidently steered around it here. Carbohydrate converts to an estimated 59.8% of dry matter, a fair way above the 46.2% typical for adult dry food, which tells you the cereal share is substantial.

The additive panel is the most transparent thing on the bag. Every vitamin is dosed in print, from vitamin A down to biotin, alongside zinc at 130mg, iron at 100mg and calcium and phosphorus set at 1.5% and 1.0%. For a label this terse everywhere else, it is a genuinely thorough panel.

Salt appears both in the recipe line and in the panel at 1.0%. Dogs enjoy it for the same reason we do. At this level it is a flavouring, and a healthy adult has nothing to worry about, though owners of dogs with heart trouble usually prefer to keep an eye on it.

£1.48 a kilo, sold as a single 20kg bag.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, feeding works out at roughly 244 grams and £0.36 a day. That comes from the standard maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal daily (110 × bodyweight^0.75) together with the food's estimated energy density. Treat that as a starting point and let condition set the final scoop.