Country Pursuit Premium: Chicken & Rice review

Both bags settle in our Good band, exactly where the typical adult dry food settles. Protein and processing and nutritional balance read Average on each, transparency is Good on the chicken and Outstanding on the lamb, and value is Good on both. The construction explains that neatly. Cereal comes first in each recipe and carbohydrate finishes between 47.3% and 52.8% of dry matter, which keeps the analysis honest rather than exciting. What holds the result up is the naming: chicken meal, lamb meal and fish meal are declared as such. A dried meal is the part of any recipe that genuinely carries protein into the kibble, so you can see where the 23% and 25% protein figures come from.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize, Chicken Meal 20%, Rice 16%, Barley, Fish Meal, Sugar Beet Pulp, Chicken Fat, Whole Linseed, Minerals, Sodium Chloride, Chicory, Yucca Extract.

Maize opens both lists and does the bulk of the carrying. Cooked properly it is a digestible source of energy, and it has fed dogs for generations. It is also among the cereals that come up most often in a dog with a grain sensitivity. That is the fair thing to say about it. Rice comes next: 16% of the chicken recipe and 26% of the lamb. Of the common grains it is the gentlest on a delicate stomach.

The meat comes as named dried meals rather than as fresh meat or as a category term, and that is the most important choice on either label. A meal goes in already dried, so the percentage you read is close to the protein that reaches the finished kibble. Fresh meat shrinks in the oven and a meal has already done its shrinking. Chicken meal at 20% and lamb meal at 17.5% therefore go further than the same figures would in fresh form.

Fish meal sits in both recipes as a second animal protein. It is a concentrated source with a strong smell that dogs tend to love, and it brings marine oils along with it. It is also the reason neither bag can be fed to a dog kept off fish. The lamb recipe uses chicken fat as well, so it cannot be treated as a single-meat diet however much the name suggests otherwise.

Freshly prepared tripe at 8% is the lamb recipe's most appealing feature. Tripe is the stomach of a ruminant, rich in protein and easy on digestion, and its main talent is persuading a doubtful dog to eat. Sugar beet pulp in both bags supplies the soluble and insoluble fibre that keeps digestion regular, and whole linseed adds plant omega 3 along with a little extra fibre.

The finishing touches differ between the two. Chicory goes into the chicken recipe, and its inulin works as a prebiotic, feeding the good bacteria that live further down. Yucca extract joins it, a long-standing kibble ingredient for keeping stool odour down. The lamb recipe uses brewers yeast instead, a traditional source of B vitamins and palatability. Both close with sodium chloride, which is simply salt, and a full mineral panel. Vitamins A, D3 and E are declared. The trace elements run to zinc at 100 mg, iron at 50 mg, manganese at 20 mg, copper at 15 mg, iodine at 2 mg and selenium at 0.1 mg per kilo.

Maize first, then chicken meal at 20% and rice at 16%, with barley behind them and fish meal after that. Chicken fat is the named fat, and chicory and yucca extract close the list. Protein is 23%, fat 12% and energy the higher of the two at 372 kcal per 100g. Barley carries gluten, which matters only in a household avoiding it. The label is written for medium and large dogs, and moisture is left undeclared, so its dry matter figures assume the 8% a kibble typically holds, putting carbohydrate at 52.8%.

£3.07 a kilo for either recipe, sold in 15kg and 3kg bags with a 300g sample size.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 226 grams a day of the chicken and about 233 grams of the lamb, which comes to £0.69 and £0.72 respectively. Each is measured against about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate).