Essential Foods Essential Stamina review

Our bands put this in Outstanding, while the run of adult dry foods finishes in the Good band. The analysis says why plainly: protein at 38.3% of dry matter, fat at 24.0%, estimated carbohydrate of only 26.2% where 46.2% is typical. The list opens with two meat entries. The pillars back that up, with nutritional balance and transparency both Outstanding and protein and processing Good.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh free-range British chicken and free-run welfare assured British country duck (32%), dried chicken and duck (32%), sweet potato, chicken fat (11%), peas, fresh Scottish salmon and trout (7%), whole egg (4%), linseed, potato, chicken liver gravy (2%), lucerne sprout, vitamins, minerals, MOS (mannan oligosaccarides), FOS (fructooligosaccharides), glucosamine, MSM (methylsulfonylmethane), chondroitin, cranberry, acai, bilberry, mulberry, apple, tomato, orange, pear, carrot, spinach,cauliflower, seaweed, marigold, ginseng, decaffeinated green tea, ginger.

The construction matches the brand's other bird recipes. Fresh chicken and duck at 32% sit above the same amount again as dried chicken and duck. The dried entry does most of the protein work, because baking strips the water from the fresh meat. Protein finishes at 38.3% of dry matter, a figure that only turns up when a dried meat sits this high on a list.

Chicken fat at 11% is what separates this recipe from its siblings. Animal fat is the fuel a dog reaches for most readily, and it makes kibble taste of something, which is why a dog in real work tends to clear the bowl without any persuasion. It is also named to species rather than left as poultry fat, which is better labelling than most of the shelf manages.

Starch takes a back seat here. No cereal appears anywhere on the list. Binding falls to sweet potato, peas and potato. Estimated carbohydrate finishes at 26.2% of dry matter where 46.2% is typical for adult dry food. That is unusually low for a kibble, and part of why the protein and fat figures sit so high.

The omega 3 side is covered by linseed and by fresh Scottish salmon and trout at 7%. One brings the long chain marine form, the other the plant form a dog has to convert for itself. Whole egg at 4% adds protein a dog uses about as efficiently as anything it eats, and lucerne sprout brings a little fibre.

Taurine is dosed at 1,500 mg. Every trace mineral comes in chelated form: zinc and iron at 50 mg, manganese at 35 mg, copper at 15 mg, iodine at 0.96 mg and selenium at 0.3 mg per kilo. MOS and FOS feed the useful gut bacteria, rosemary extract does the preserving, and the joint trio is named without printed amounts. Calcium sits at 1.75% of dry matter.

£6.75 a kilo, in 2.5kg and 10kg bags, both of which are also sold as multipacks.

Because the kibble carries 400 kcal per 100 grams, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs only around 210 grams a day. That works from an assumed need of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), and puts the day at £1.42. Feed to the ribs, not to the figure. A dog in genuine work will eat a good deal more than that.