Earls Moist & Meaty: Meaty Chunks With Chicken review

Both flavours land in our Poor band together, and the reason is worth setting out properly. Our scoring rewards a recipe that puts meat ahead of cereal and keeps the balance of the bowl right. A wheat based food with a modest meat fraction behind it collects very little of that credit. Protein and processing and nutritional balance each come back Poor, with transparency reading Good. The band does not say that anything in the bag is unsafe or unkind. This is an everyday food built to a modest specification, and a dog settled, happy and holding condition on it is doing perfectly well.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals (Wholegrain Wheat 29%), Meat and Animal Derivatives 19% (Including 4% Chicken), Various Sugars, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Minerals, Hydrolysed Yeast and Chicory Extract (0.1%), Antioxidants, Preservatives.

Semi moist is the middle format and it earns its keep. Moisture is declared at 19%, enough to leave every chunk soft and yielding, yet the food still lives in a cupboard and scoops like a dry one. For a dog with sore gums or a shortage of teeth, that combination is the entire argument for the bag.

Almost everything on this list is a legal umbrella term. Cereals, meat and animal derivatives, derivatives of vegetable origin and oils and fats each cover an enormous span of possible ingredients, from very good to very plain. None of them tells you where in that span your bag has landed. Two entries break the pattern, wholegrain wheat at 29% and the named meat at 4%, and those are the only firm anchors the label offers.

It is worth being fair about what those terms can mean. The meat fraction can be genuinely good material, organ meats included. A lot of an animal's nutrition sits in those. It can equally be plainer stuff, and there is no way to tell from outside the bag which one you have. The same goes for the vegetable derivatives and for the oils and fats. The practical consequence is that a dog on an elimination plan cannot use this label to steer by, since the species behind the category are not written down.

Various sugars sit third on the list, which is high up, and in a semi moist food they are there for more than sweetness. Sugar holds water inside the chunk and keeps it pliable in the bag. No percentage is declared against them, so the pack will not tell you how much is used. Hydrolysed yeast and chicory extract at 0.1% follow, chicory being a natural source of the soluble fibre inulin, which works as a prebiotic.

The analysis fills in the rest of the story. Protein converts to 22.2% of dry matter and fat to 8.6%, both modest readings, while the carbohydrate estimate reaches 54.4%, so wheat and the other cereals supply most of the meal. Crude ash lands at 11.7% of dry matter, on the high side, and energy comes in at 294 kcal per 100g, which is what the moisture in the chunks does to the calorie count.

The added panel is the most exact part of this label. Vitamins A, D3 and E are printed with doses, vitamin E at 210mg, and behind them come zinc at 42mg, manganese at 5.4mg, copper at 1.06mg, iodine at 0.82mg and selenium at 0.05mg. Selenium comes here as sodium selenite. Europe permits two forms, and this is the commoner one, with selenised yeast the alternative usually reported as better absorbed.

The chicken version pins 4% chicken inside the same 19% meat and animal derivatives. Reach for this one if your dog simply prefers poultry. No meat is fed more widely than chicken, and partly for that reason it is also the one dogs react to most often. As with the beef recipe, the undeclared remainder of the meat fraction means beef could be in this bag too.

£1.66 a kilo on both flavours, sold in a 3kg bag.

On that basis a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 286 grams a day, which comes to roughly £0.47 a day. The figure assumes around 840 kcal a day, using the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75.