Eukanuba Adult Large Breed Rich In Lamb review

This one comes out in our Good band, which is also where the adult dry shelf settles at its midpoint. The lift comes from how the label is written. The analysis has nothing to do with it. Every meat is pinned to a species, the percentages that matter are printed on the pack, and no vague animal fat or unspecified poultry appears anywhere. That is what carries protein and processing to Good and transparency to Outstanding. Nutritional balance reads Average because protein finishes at 25.0% of dry matter and carbohydrate at 51.4%, so the cereals are doing a real share of the work. For a large adult dog with an ordinary week behind it, those are perfectly workable numbers.

Ingredients, as declared: dried chicken and turkey (a natural source of glucosamine, chondroitin and taurine), lamb (14%), rice (14%), maize, barley, sorghum, pork fat, dried beet pulp (2.6%), chicken gravy, dried whole egg, minerals (including sodium hexametaphosphate 0.35%), fructooligosaccharides (0.25%, a natural prebiotic), brewer's dried yeast (a natural source of B-vitamins and selenium), mannanoligosaccharides (0.13%, a natural prebiotic), glucosamine (from animal tissues) (0.04%).

Dried chicken and turkey opens the recipe, which tells you where most of the protein comes from before lamb is even mentioned. Dried meat arrives with no water left in it, so its place in the finished kibble is secure. Fresh meat shrinks in the oven, and dried meat does not. Lamb then joins at 14%, enough to give the food its character and its flavour without turning it into a single meat recipe.

Lamb is an easy meat for most dogs, palatable and readily digested. For a dog who has spent years on poultry, it is a genuinely useful change. It is a red meat, which is a different profile from a bird rather than a better or worse one.

Rice at 14% is the gentlest starch on the list and sits alongside maize, barley and sorghum. Barley is the pick of that trio, cooking down to something dogs handle well and bringing fibre with it, while maize and sorghum are plainer starch that mainly give the kibble its structure. Carbohydrate works out at 47.3% as fed and 51.4% of dry matter, against the 46.2% typical of adult dry food.

Pork fat is the added fat, and naming the animal is more than many labels manage. Pork is rare in dog food, so for a lot of dogs it counts as an unfamiliar protein, though a rendered fat carries very little protein either way.

The joint story is told twice here. Glucosamine, chondroitin and taurine are declared as natural parts of the poultry meal, and that is fair enough, since all three do occur in meat and cartilage. Glucosamine from animal tissues is then added again at 0.04%. Read it as steady background support for a heavy frame, not a treatment. That is the honest reading of joint supplements generally.

Two prebiotics work the gut side, fructooligosaccharides at 0.25% and mannanoligosaccharides at 0.13%, both aimed at the flora of the large intestine. Beet pulp at 2.6% supplies the fibre they work alongside. Brewer's dried yeast brings B vitamins and selenium, dried whole egg adds a little highly digestible protein, and sodium hexametaphosphate at 0.35% slows plaque hardening into tartar.

Energy is declared rather than estimated at 357 kcal per 100 grams, which is a small point in the label's favour. Calcium works out at 1.41% of dry matter, a comfortable adult level for a big dog. The panel is dosed in print with vitamin E at 250mg per kilo, zinc at 62.5mg and L-carnitine at 50mg.

Two bag sizes are listed, 3kg and 12kg.

On portions, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 235 grams a day here, based on a need of roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). This is a large breed recipe, so most dogs eating it will sit well above that weight and the bag's own table scales up accordingly.