Countrymans Countryman's Working Dog 24% review

Our bands put this one in Poor, well beneath the Good band that most adult dry food settles into. The reason is mostly silence. Category names stand in for ingredients throughout, leaving no way to judge either the meat or the grain, which is what leaves protein and processing and transparency reading Poor, with nutritional balance Average. The analysis is kinder: a respectable protein and fat pairing for a dog in work. Dogs that get along with a plain cereal-based kibble tend to get along with this one happily enough.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, meat & animal derivatives, derivatives of vegetable origin, oils & fats, sodium chloride.

Cereals leads the recipe, and it is the broadest word on any dog food label. Every grain there is falls under it, from the best to the worst, and the maker can move between them as supply changes. That is not the same as saying the grain here is poor, because plenty of solid foods use the term to keep a formula private. It does mean you cannot check.

Meat and animal derivatives comes next. The category covers what is left of an animal once the human food cuts are away, which can be good nutritious material or something a good deal thinner, and the label gives no clue which. More to the point for a busy owner, it names no bird or beast, so a dog that reacts to a particular meat cannot be fed around the problem using this list.

Behind those two sit derivatives of vegetable origin, an equally wide term. It covers the by-products from grain processing, from vegetables, from legumes and from oilseed. Then come oils and fats with no source given, then sodium chloride. Salt is the one entry that leaves nothing to guess at.

The declared analysis is where this recipe makes its case. Protein at 24% and fat at 9.5% work out at 26.1% and 10.3% of dry matter, a fair pairing for a dog covering ground all day. Moisture is not printed, so those conversions rest on the 8% a dry food of this sort usually holds. Carbohydrate comes to 50.5% of dry matter, above the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. Energy is estimated at roughly 328 kcal per 100 grams against a typical 357, so a genuinely hard-working dog will get through a decent bowlful.

£1.21 a kilo, in a 15kg sack, also offered as a case of six.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition takes roughly 256 grams a day on about 840 kcal a day. That is the standard maintenance estimate, 110 × bodyweight^0.75, and it works out at £0.31 a day. A dog properly in work eats above that line, so read it as a floor rather than a target.