CSJ Command Performance 24 (active) review

Good is where this one finishes, level with the reading typical of adult dry food. Three fairly simple things put it there: a named meat meal heads the list, the recipe is itemised with almost no category language, and estimated carbohydrate lands at 44.3% of dry matter. That is a shade under the 46.2% typical for a dry food. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Average while transparency comes back Outstanding, which fits a label that tells you what it has done and then prints the doses to prove it. For a dog in real work, this is a straightforward, well-declared choice.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb meal (min 26%), Rice, Maize, Chicken fat, Prairie meal, Beet pulp, Vegetarian gravy, Minerals, Yeast, Linseed, Egg powder, Dried herbs (total herbs 1000mg/kg; Blackcurrant, Rosemary, Pomegranate, Milk Thistle, Seaweed, Spearmint, Parsley, Marshmallow root, Marjoram, Oregano), Glucosamine (400mg/kg), MSM (400mg/kg), Yucca schidigera, Chondroitin (200mg/kg)

Lamb meal at a minimum of 26% opens the recipe, and the word meal is the important one. The water is taken out of a meal before it ever reaches the mixer. A fresh meat headline would lose weight in the oven, and a meal does not. That is why 26% on the label stays close to 26% in the finished kibble. Dogs tend to like lamb and most digest it easily. If chicken has started to bore your dog, it makes a sensible animal to lead on.

Rice and maize supply the working energy. Rice is one of the gentlest cereals on a dog's gut. Maize is a common and effective energy source, though it turns up more often than most grains in the histories of dogs that react to something. Check that against your own dog's history. Beet pulp handles the fibre. Yeast and a vegetarian gravy fill in behind it.

Chicken fat is the added animal fat and it is a genuinely good sign that the bird is named rather than hidden inside a general animal fats term. It does two jobs. It carries energy and it makes the kibble taste worth finishing. Further down, egg powder is a compact source of high-quality protein. Omega 3 arrives in its plant form from the linseed, and a dog is slow to convert that into the active forms.

Prairie meal is the one entry that does not explain itself. It is not a term with a settled meaning on a British label, so it is the question to ask the maker if you like knowing precisely what is in the bowl. Everything else on this list says plainly what it is, which makes the single vague entry stand out more than it would elsewhere.

The joint supplements carry printed doses: glucosamine and MSM at 400 mg/kg each, with chondroitin at 200 mg/kg. Glucosamine comes commercially from shellfish, MSM from pine bark and chondroitin from animal cartilage. The evidence on all three is mixed, so read them as sensible support for a dog that asks a lot of its joints rather than as a promise. Yucca schidigera sits alongside them, traditionally included with kennel odour in mind.

The dried herb blend totals a gram in every kilo across ten named plants, from blackcurrant and pomegranate through to marjoram and oregano. Each one is there at trace level and none is doing heavy lifting. Rosemary is the useful one, acting as a natural antioxidant. The minerals are dosed generously and partly chelated. Zinc comes at 70 mg as sulphate with 30 mg as a chelate, and iron at 60 mg with 30 mg chelated. Manganese and copper are both part chelated, and vitamin E is at 250 mg per kilo.

£2.19 a kilo in a 15kg sack.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at roughly 219 grams a day on an assumed need of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £0.48 a day. A dog fed from the label's active table eats more than that, since it asks 170 to 280 grams for a dog between 10kg and 20kg.