Earls Complete review

Earls Complete reads in our Poor band, with the typical adult dry food two bands clear of it in our Good band. What the recipe is built from drives almost all of that reading. Cereals, meat and animal derivatives, oils and fats and derivatives of vegetable origin are all category headings. A heading of that kind can cover anything from the very good to the very ordinary, and the reader never knows which. Add declared sugars and a carbohydrate estimate of 56.0% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical, and nutritional balance reads Poor alongside protein and processing, with transparency the one pillar reading Excellent. Protein at 23.9% of dry matter is respectable and the mineral panel is dosed in full, so there is substance behind the category terms. The label simply does not let you see it.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals (40% Wholegrain Maize), Meat and Animal Derivatives 24% (Including 4% Beef), Oils and Fats, Various Sugars, Minerals, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Vegetables (1.25% Dried Peas), Seeds (Linseeds 0.06%), Hydrolysed Yeast and Chicory Extracts (0.003%)

Cereals at 40% wholegrain maize is the opening entry, and it is half specific. Most labels do not go that far, and here the maize is named with a figure against it. The word cereals still means other grains can sit alongside it without being listed. Maize is a dense energy source and is well digested once cooked, and wholegrain is the better form of it.

Meat and animal derivatives at 24% is the entry that decides how you read the food. The legal definition covers the fleshy parts and processing derivatives of warm blooded land animals, which spans everything from good material to the very ordinary, and only 4% of it is pinned to beef. There is nothing here that says the meat is poor and equally nothing that says it is not, which is exactly the difficulty with the term.

Various sugars deserves its own line. Sugar goes into dog food for the same reason it goes into ours, because it makes the bowl more appealing, and it is not an ingredient most nutritionists want to see on a daily list. That matters most if your dog is carrying a little extra weight.

The small entries are more specific than the large ones. Dried peas at 1.25% bring a little fibre and plant nutrition, and linseeds at 0.06% are a token amount of plant omega 3. Hydrolysed yeast with chicory extracts at 0.003% is the prebiotic gesture here. Chicory carries inulin, and gut bacteria live on it. At those percentages none of them changes the food much, but the intention behind them is the right one.

The vitamin and mineral declaration is the strongest part of the label. Vitamin A at 14475 IU and vitamin D3 at 1689 IU open it. Then come zinc at 77mg, iron at 31mg, manganese at 29mg, copper at 3.68mg, iodine at 0.94mg and selenium at 0.08mg, every one of them dosed in print. Sodium selenite is the selenium here. Two forms are allowed in pet food. This is the commoner and the less readily absorbed, and it is what the whole category tends to use.

The analysis reads better than the ingredients list. Protein converts to 23.9% of dry matter and fat to 7.6%, with carbohydrate estimated at 56.0% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical for adult dry food, and energy declared at 332 kcal per 100g. Because moisture is absent from the label, those dry matter conversions are worked from an assumed 8%.

£0.95 a kilo, sold in a 3kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 253 grams a day, which comes to £0.24 a day. That is based on around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). On the same energy basis a 20kg dog would take 282 to 345 grams, and either way your dog's waistline has the final word.