CSJ Herbie Nuts review

Our scoring places this one in our Good band, level with the middle of the adult dry shelf. Nutritional balance is the pillar reading Poor: protein converts to 22.2% of dry matter, fat to 11.1% and the estimated carbohydrate to 58.3%, where 46.2% is typical for adult dry food. Transparency reads Outstanding, value Good and protein and processing Average. This is not a badly made food, simply a cereal led one in a market that has moved towards meat. Plenty of dogs have lived long and happy lives on precisely this sort of recipe.

Ingredients, as declared: Wheat, Chicken Meal, Maize, Chicken Fat, Chicken Liver, Rice, Unmolassed Beet Pulp, Beef Meal, Wheatfeed, Prairie Meal, Alfalfa, Oats, Salmon Oil, Mint, Fenugreek, Yeast, Seaweed, Salt, Yucca Schidigera.

Wheat leads, and it is the entry that shapes how the whole food reads. It binds a kibble beautifully, and that is why British dry food has leaned on it for decades. It is also the grain that comes up most in the histories of intolerant dogs. For the many dogs that are perfectly fine with wheat, it is simply energy.

Chicken meal comes second, in the dried and concentrated form, and its protein survives the oven whole. Chicken liver a little further down is the palatability entry and a genuinely nutrient dense one, heavy in B vitamins, vitamin A and copper. Beef meal adds a second animal protein. Protein finishes at 22.2% of dry matter, modest for a dry food.

Behind the meat the list turns cereal again, with maize, rice, wheatfeed, prairie meal and oats. Wheatfeed is the fine material left over from flour milling. Prairie meal is maize gluten under another name, and it is plant protein holding the protein figure up. Carbohydrate estimates at 58.3% of dry matter, and it is that combination our scoring reacts to.

The herbs the food is named for are mint, fenugreek and seaweed, all sitting after the yeast. Seaweed is a useful source of iodine and a spread of other minerals, mint is there for the breath and fenugreek is a traditional appetite herb. Salmon oil above them supplies the marine omega 3s, and alfalfa adds greenery and fibre.

The mineral panel is worth a look. Zinc is supplied twice over, at 350mg/kg as the sulphate and 300mg/kg as an amino acid chelate. A dog takes up the chelated version more readily. Skin and coat lean on zinc harder than on any other mineral. Salt appearing as its own line is honest labelling, and selenium comes as sodium selenite in line with most of the shelf.

£1.32 a kilo, in a 15kg sack.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat around 224 grams a day, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £0.30 a day. The label's own guide is more generous at 170 to 290 grams for a dog of 10kg to 20kg, so let the waistline arbitrate between them.