Country Dog Original Adult 1+: Chicken review

Both flavours read in our Average band, a step under the Good band that the typical adult dry food occupies, and it is worth setting out why. Wheat leads the list, which in a dry food means it is the largest single thing in the bag. Meat and bone meal is where the animal content comes from, a legitimate ingredient but an unnamed one, and only a small declared slice of it is tied to a species. Protein finishes low for a kibble and the starch share runs high.

None of that makes it a food to be nervous about. A plain biscuit of this shape has fed generations of dogs perfectly happily. This one at least sets out plainly what is in the bag. It doses its minerals and names its fat. Many labels of the same vintage do neither.

Ingredients, as declared: Wheat, Meat and Bone Meal 20% (Including 11% Chicken), Barley, Chicken Fat, Chicken Gravy, Minerals, Fish Oil (0.3%), Prebiotic Mannan Oligosaccharides (0.08%), Yucca Extract (0.01%).

Wheat comes first in both recipes. That makes it the largest single thing in the bag. It binds a biscuit beautifully, which is why it has been used this way for decades. It is also the cereal behind more dietary intolerances in dogs than any other, showing up in the skin and the digestion when it does. Most dogs eat it for years without any trouble at all. It is only worth a second thought if yours has a history of itching or loose stools that nobody has got to the bottom of yet.

The animal content is meat and bone meal at 20%, with 4% named as beef in one recipe and 11% named as chicken in the other. Meat and bone meal is rendered and dried, and it is genuinely concentrated protein. The term itself names neither the animal nor the parts. The bone in it lifts the mineral content, which is part of why crude ash reads 9%. What is named is named, and the balance is left open.

The analysis is modest across the board. Protein converts to 23.1% of dry matter, fat to 8.8% and estimated carbohydrate to 55.5%, against the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. The label leaves the energy figure out, so the 318 kcal per 100g here is our estimate. Keep that in mind against the feeding table.

Two things on the list are better than the headline suggests. The added fat is named chicken fat rather than an anonymous animal fat, and it appears in the beef recipe as well as the chicken one. Fish oil at 0.3% brings marine omega 3, the form a dog uses most directly, even at that small a dose. Barley is the second cereal and a reasonable grain once cooked. It brings fibre and micronutrients along with its starch.

Every added mineral carries a printed dose: zinc at 100 mg and iron at 50 mg per kilo, manganese at 20 mg, copper at 15 mg, iodine at 2 mg and selenium at 0.1 mg. The forms are the plainest on the shelf, an oxide for the zinc and sodium selenite for the selenium, so the gut has to work a little harder on them than it would on chelates. Mannan oligosaccharides at 0.08% and yucca extract at 0.01% round the list off, the first a prebiotic for the large intestine and the second the usual answer to stool odour.

The same construction with a larger named share: 11% of the 20% meat and bone meal is declared as chicken, and the added fat and the gravy are chicken too. That makes this the more clearly identified of the two recipes.

Sold in 15kg bags.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works through roughly 264 grams a day as a guide, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). A single bag covers that dog for the best part of two months.