Engage Adult: Chicken review

Neither bag reaches the Good band where the typical adult dry food settles, and both finish in our Average band. The reasons are worth putting plainly. Maize leads both lists, the declared meat content is a quarter of the beef recipe and just under a third of the chicken one, and protein converts to 22.0% and 27.5% of dry matter. Carbohydrate reaches 59.1% of dry matter in the beef bag and 48.0% in the chicken one, against a category norm of 46.2%. Nutritional balance reads Poor on the beef and Average on the chicken, protein and processing Average on the beef and Poor on the chicken, and transparency Good on each. None of that stops a healthy dog doing perfectly well on it, and a great many dogs have.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize, Dehydrated Poultry Meat, Dehulled Oats, Poultry Fat, Whole Linseed, Beet Pulp, Fishmeal, Chicken Gravy, Calcium Carbonate, Sodium Chloride, Yeast Extract, Chicory Extract, Meat content: 30% (stated only in the product listing/short description, not in the Composition block)

Maize is the first entry on both lists, and that is where the bulk of the kibble comes from. Once cooked it is a perfectly digestible cereal, and it brings both starch and some protein. What it is doing here is filling the position meat fills in a meat-led recipe, and that one difference separates this food from the meat-first kibbles beside it.

The meat is dehydrated in both bags, which is the concentrated form, so the declared figures do not shrink in the oven the way a fresh meat percentage does. The beef bag prints its meat content at 25% on the composition panel itself. The chicken bag quotes 30% in its product description and not on the panel, which is a weaker place for a figure to live.

Species naming is the honest weak spot. The chicken bag calls its main meat dehydrated poultry, a term that covers chicken, turkey, duck and goose alike, so only the chicken gravy further down the list actually pins a bird. The beef bag is specific about its own meat, but the poultry fat in both recipes carries the same broad term. For most dogs this is academic. For a dog you are keeping off a particular bird, it means the label cannot answer the question.

Fishmeal sits mid-list in both recipes and earns its place. It brings marine omega 3 in a form the dog takes up directly, which whole linseed alongside it cannot supply. The flip side is simple enough: neither bag is fish free.

The rest is workmanlike. Beet pulp gives fibre and chicory extract is a prebiotic that feeds the gut's own bacteria. Yeast extract works as a palatant, as does the natural digest on the beef bag, a savoury coating sprayed on so the kibble tastes of something. Calcium carbonate tops up the mineral side, though neither label prints a calcium figure.

Trace minerals are dosed in print, in oxide and sulphate forms and not as chelates. The chicken bag is dosed the higher of the two, at 97 mg of zinc, 250 mg of iron and 65 mg of manganese per kilo. The beef splits its zinc into 70 mg as the oxide plus 30 mg as a glycine chelate, with 75 mg of iron and 40 mg of manganese.

The richer of the two at 25% protein and 13% fat as fed, and the only one to put dehulled oats in behind the maize, which softens the cereal side a little. Its meat is declared as dehydrated poultry, not as chicken, and chicken gravy is the only entry on the list naming a bird.

The beef is £1.33 a kilo and the chicken £1.53, both sold in 3kg and 15kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult in moderate condition would eat about 257 grams a day on the beef, or 239 grams on the chicken. Behind that sits around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is £0.34 a day on the beef, £0.37 on the chicken. Both figures rest on estimated calories, so weigh the food and watch the dog before you trust the arithmetic.