Engage Adult with Rice: Salmon & Rice review

These two sit in our Good band, exactly level with the typical adult dry food. Transparency reads Excellent, value keeps step at Good, and protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Average. That is the sound of a food doing everything competently and nothing remarkably. Rice leads the list, and the declared meat content is 26% on the duck, 28% on the salmon. Carbohydrate converts to 53.3% of dry matter on the duck, 48.9% on the salmon, against 46.2% for the category. The joint ingredients and the named oil are what lift it clear of the plainer recipes on the same shelf.

Ingredients, as declared: Rice, Dehydrated Salmon, Sunflower Oil, Dehulled Oats, Whole Linseed, Beet Pulp, Fishmeal, Calcium Carbonate, Chicken Gravy, Sodium Chloride, Yeast Extract, Chicory Extract, Chondroitin Sulphate, Glucosamine Hydrochloride. Meat content: 28% (stated only in the product listing/short description, not in the Composition block)

Rice heads both lists with dehulled oats a few places behind it. For a dog with an easily upset stomach, rice is among the gentler cereals, and dehulled oats bring fibre along with manganese, selenium and B vitamins. Between them they set the starch level, which converts to 53.3% of dry matter on the duck, 48.9% on the salmon.

Both bags use dehydrated meat, duck in one bag and salmon in the other, declared at 26% and 28% in the product descriptions. Dehydrated meat arrives already concentrated, so unlike a fresh meat percentage those figures do not shrink once the kibble has been through the oven.

Two entries complicate the one-animal story that the front of the bag suggests. Chicken gravy is on both lists as a palatant, and fishmeal sits just above it as the marine omega source. In practice that makes the duck bag a duck and chicken recipe with fish in it, and the salmon bag fish twice over. For most dogs this is neither here nor there, and the fishmeal in particular is doing useful work, but it is the reason neither recipe can anchor a strict exclusion plan.

Sunflower oil is the added fat, and having it named is a real point in the label's favour. Saturated fat is low in it, and it carries vitamin E naturally. Whole linseed alongside it takes care of the plant omega, and the fishmeal handles the marine side. The fat in these recipes is more thoughtfully chosen than the position of the cereal might lead you to expect.

Chondroitin sulphate and glucosamine hydrochloride close both lists. They are the two ingredients most often reached for when joints start to age, and finding them in an everyday kibble is genuinely useful. Neither is given a dose, though, and both sit at the very bottom of the list, where inclusions are smallest. Take them as a helpful extra and not as the reason to choose the food.

The remaining entries are housekeeping. Beet pulp gives fibre, chicory extract feeds the gut's own bacteria, and yeast extract makes the kibble taste of something. The duck bag adds mono-dicalcium phosphate alongside calcium carbonate on the mineral side. Trace minerals are printed with doses on both, at 97 mg of zinc, 250 mg of iron, 65 mg of manganese and 28 mg of copper per kilo.

Salmon is the named meat, dehydrated and declared at 28%, and with fishmeal behind it the fish content arrives from two entries rather than one. It carries a little more of everything than its stablemate, at 24% protein, 12% fat and 8.5% ash as fed, and its calcium carbonate sits higher up the list.

£2.33 a kilo for the duck and rice and £2.47 for the salmon and rice, both sold in 3kg and 15kg bags.

Feeding a 15kg adult in moderate condition works out at about 247 grams a day on the duck and 246 grams on the salmon. That rests on around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £0.58 and £0.61 a day. Both rest on estimated calorie figures, so let the scales and your dog's waistline have the final word.