Country Dog Classic Adult 1+: Beef & Rice review

Both flavours finish in our Good band, and so does the typical adult dry food. This pair sits squarely in the middle of the shelf. The meat declaration is honest and printed in two parts, which counts for something at any level. Two things hold the reading where it is: how much of the bag goes to cereal, and a protein figure that reads modestly once you allow for the water in the fresh meat.

Ingredients, as declared: Beef 31% (Beef Meal 25%, Freshly Prepared Beef 6%), Maize (26%), Barley, Rice (16.5%), Chicken Fat, Flaxseed (2.5%), Chicken Gravy, Minerals, Prebiotic Mannan Oligosaccharide (0.08%), Yucca Extract (0.01%).

Each recipe declares 31% of its named meat. What matters is how that 31% divides: 25% meal and 6% freshly prepared. The water is already driven off meal, so it survives the oven largely intact. Having the larger share in meal form is the more honest way round for a biscuit built like this. Protein converts to 25.0% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 52.7%, against the 46.2% typical for adult dry food.

Maize, barley and rice make up the plant side. Barley is a capable grain once cooked, bringing fibre and micronutrients such as selenium and copper along with its starch, and rice at 16.5% is among the kinder cereals on a dog's digestion. Maize is the plainest of the three and it sits high in both lists, which is what lifts the carbohydrate reading. None of that troubles a dog that has always eaten biscuit, but it does mean the bowl leans on grain.

Chicken fat is the added fat in both flavours, named on the label, and that specificity is worth having. Flaxseed at 2.5% supplies the omega 3, in its plant form. A dog's body turns that into the skin-active types slowly, so allow a coat several weeks to show it.

The small print carries its figures, which not every label of this shape bothers with. Mannan oligosaccharide at 0.08% is a prebiotic, feeding the good bacteria low down in the gut. Yucca extract at 0.01% is the usual choice for keeping stool odour down. Both are trace-level additions and the printed percentages let you see exactly that.

Zinc is dosed at 100 mg per kilo, iron at 50 mg, manganese at 20 mg, copper at 15 mg, iodine at 2 mg and selenium at 0.1 mg. That is a complete panel with a figure beside every entry. The forms chosen are the plainest ones available, an oxide for the zinc and sodium selenite for the selenium. Absorption is a little less efficient than a chelated food manages, though the amounts themselves are all declared.

Beef at 31%, with maize at 26%, the lower cereal share of the two. Chicken fat and chicken gravy still sit in this recipe, so it is the beef-flavoured version rather than a chicken-free one, and the declared analysis is identical to its stablemate.

Sold in 2kg and 15kg bags in both flavours.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works through about 240 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The larger bag covers that dog for roughly two months.