Country Dog Premium Grain Free Adult 1+: Salmon & Sweet Potato review

Both recipes come out in our Good band, and the typical adult dry food occupies the same ground. The salmon reads a shade ahead of the chicken, largely because it declares more animal and asks less of its potato, and it reads Good on protein and processing where the chicken reads Average. Nothing exotic is doing the work in either case. A large named meat share, a carbohydrate load kept in check and a label willing to print its percentages will carry a food this far on their own.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon 45% (Salmon Meal 35%, Freshly Prepared Salmon 10%), Sweet Potato (30%), Potato (9%), Rapeseed Oil (4%), Pea Starch (4%), Beet Pulp (4%), Flaxseed (2%), Lucerne, Minerals, Carrot, Tomato Powder, Seaweed, Herbs (0.1%), Yucca Extract (0.02%), Cranberry (0.01%), Glucosamine (0.0088%), Chondroitin (0.0035%), Yeast.

Both recipes open with a named animal and then print the split between the dried meal and the freshly prepared meat, which is the detail that lets you read them properly. Fresh meat carries a lot of water, and the oven takes it off, so the meal is the half that survives into the kibble. In both bags the meal is comfortably the bigger share, which is why the headline figures translate into real protein rather than a good first impression.

The binding in both recipes comes from potato and sweet potato, and neither list has a cereal on it. Sweet potato brings fibre and a slower release along with its starch, and beet pulp adds the soft, mostly soluble fibre that helps keep stools firm without asking anything of the dog.

The joint pair is declared to the last decimal on both labels, with glucosamine and chondroitin sitting quietly under the minerals. These are cartilage building blocks rather than quick fixes, and they belong on a food written for the long haul, which is exactly the audience these two bags name.

Seaweed appears in both recipes and earns its place as a mineral source, iodine above all, which the thyroid runs on. It is used in the small amounts that suit it, and cranberry at 0.01% and yucca extract are finishing touches of the same sort.

One honest caveat sits in the additive panel. Zinc arrives partly as a chelate of protein hydrolysates in both bags, and those hydrolysates are not tied to any species in print. A dog on a strict exclusion plan cannot be certain which protein they are meeting. For everyday feeding it changes very little, and the chelated form is the one a dog absorbs most easily. Selenium comes as sodium selenite, the workaday form permitted in the EU and the one most makers reach for.

Salmon at 45%, split 35% salmon meal and 10% freshly prepared salmon, on a sweet potato base of 30% with potato at 9% behind it. Rapeseed oil at 4% supplies the fat, which keeps the whole bag clear of land meat. Protein tops the pair at 27%, or 29.7% of dry matter. Carrot and tomato powder fill out the tail, with lucerne and a 0.1% herb blend behind them. The herbs are not named, so read them as seasoning. Energy is estimated at 326 kcal per 100g.

Both recipes are sold in 2kg and 15kg bags.

Take a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, working from a daily target of roughly 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to about 227 grams a day of the chicken and about 257 grams of the salmon. Portion by the dog, not by the number.