Earls Worker Complete Dry Food: Chicken & Vegetables review

Both varieties land in our Poor band, two steps below the Good band where the middle of the adult dry category sits, and almost all of that gap is about naming. Cereals, meat and animal derivatives and oils and fats are umbrella terms. Each covers a wide spread of material, from the genuinely good to the very ordinary, and a label that will not say which cannot be credited for it. The declared analysis tells the same story from the other side, with protein converting to 24.2% of dry matter and carbohydrate to 54.4%. It still does what this food was built to do. It is a plain working ration, and for a household feeding several dogs one familiar daily bowl it is easy to live with.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, Meat and Animal Derivatives (25%, Including 4% Chicken), Oils, Fats, Minerals, Vegetables (1.25% Dried Peas), Hydrolysed Yeast, Chicory Extracts (0.01%), Various Sugars.

Cereals lead both labels, and that single word covers a lot of ground. It can mean wheat, maize, rice, oats or barley in any combination, and because the type is not fixed in print the grain can move with the market. Some good foods use the term to keep a recipe to themselves, others use it because the material varies. Either way the reader is not told, and sitting at the front of the list the cereals are the largest part of the bowl.

Meat and animal derivatives is declared at 25%, with the named animal, beef or chicken, accounting for 4% of the food. The umbrella term covers the fleshy parts and the by-products of warm blooded land animals, a span that runs from good muscle meat down to the plainer grades. It does not say which species is in the mix. The 4% that is named is the part you can count on.

Oils and fats follows the same pattern, naming neither the plant nor the animal it came from. Total fat is declared at 8%, which is lean for a dry food, so there is not a great deal of it in either direction. For a dog who gains condition just by looking at the bag, that leanness is the useful part of this recipe.

Vegetables appear with dried peas pinned at 1.25%, hydrolysed yeast adds a savoury note that keeps dogs interested, and chicory extract is listed at 0.01%. Chicory root is the usual source of inulin, a prebiotic fibre the large intestine's bacteria feed on. At 0.01% it is a gesture towards gut support, not a dose of it. Various sugars close the list, there for palatability.

Zinc at 97 mg, iron at 97 mg, manganese at 38 mg, copper at 14 mg and iodine at 1.45 mg per kilo are all dosed in print. They come as oxides and sulphates, not as the chelates a dog's gut takes up a little more readily. Selenium comes as sodium selenite, the more usual of the two forms pet food allows.

Chicken at 4% is the named animal in this one, again declared inside the 25% derivatives block. Chicken is fed more widely in this country than any other meat, and for a dog with no strong history either way it is the easier introduction of the two. That same popularity is why more dogs turn out to be sensitive to it than to any other meat.

£0.75 a kilo, sold in a single 12kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 264 grams a day of this, which works out at roughly 20p. The estimate uses about 840 kcal a day, from 110 × bodyweight^0.75, the usual maintenance sum. The label's own guide gives 175 to 214 grams a day for a 10kg adult. Where the two differ, your dog's waistline has the last word.