CSJ CP7 Plus review

This one comes out in our Good band, which is exactly where the middle of the adult dry shelf sits. Transparency is the pillar doing the lifting: the turkey is split into its fresh and dried shares in print, the joint supplements carry doses and the herb blend is itemised. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Average, held there by a cereal heavy middle and by a maize gluten entry travelling under its other name. It is an honest, well documented everyday food rather than a meat first one, and it seems to know which of the two it is.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey meal (14%), Fresh turkey (14%), Rice, Brown rice, oats, Maize, Chicken fat, Beet pulp, Chicken gravy, Chicken meal, Minerals, Salmon oil, Potato, Prairie meal, Yeast (natural source of MOS & beta glucans), Peas, Dried fruit & herbs (total herbs 2000mg/kg; Blackcurrant, Rosemary, Pomegranate, Milk thistle, Seaweed, Spearmint, Parsley, Marshmallow root, Marjoram, Oregano, Dandelion, Turmeric, Celery seed, Burdock root, Nettle, Devil's claw root), Glucosamine (400mg/kg), MSM (400mg/kg), Yucca schidigera, Chondroitin (200mg/kg).

Turkey meal at 14% and fresh turkey at 14% open the list, and printing the two separately is genuinely useful. The fresh share goes in mostly as water, and the oven removes it. The meal is already dried and carries its protein straight through. That makes it the more meaningful half of that pair. Turkey is leaner than chicken and easy to digest. Food written for older dogs leans on it for exactly that reason.

Rice, brown rice, oats and maize make up the cereal base. Brown rice keeps more of its bran and its micronutrients than white rice does. Oats slow the release of energy and add fibre. This label does not declare moisture. The dry matter figures here work from the 8% that a dry food usually holds. That puts the carbohydrate estimate at 55.4% of dry matter.

Halfway down sits prairie meal, and the name needs translating. It is maize gluten, a by-product of maize milling used to raise the protein figure without using more meat. Dogs get less out of it than they get from an animal source, and it is the entry we would most like to see leave. It sits well down the order, so it is a corner of the recipe rather than its backbone.

Chicken turns up three ways behind the turkey, as fat, as gravy and as meal. All three are palatable and useful, and all three are chicken. The marine omega 3s come from salmon oil, and a stiffening older dog benefits from those most. Beet pulp handles the fibre.

This label saves its best for the tail. Glucosamine and MSM at 400mg/kg each and chondroitin at 200mg/kg are all dosed. The herb blend at 2000mg/kg in total names every plant in it, devil's claw root among them. That is a plant with a long history of easing joint pain and one you rarely see in a dry food. At that total, treat the blend as a gentle addition, but naming the contents is the honest way to do it.

The sack is 15kg and the food works out at £1.78 a kilo.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition takes about 241 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £0.43 a day. For a dog of 10kg to 20kg the label suggests 150 to 250 grams, and your dog's shape can decide between the two figures.