Eukanuba Adult Large Breed Rich in Salmon & Barley review

Good band for this one, level with the adult dry shelf at its midpoint. Transparency is the pillar doing the lifting here, reading Excellent, with value sitting level with the overall band. The fish is named as salmon rather than left as an unspecified white fish, its share is printed on the pack, and the added fats are pinned to their sources. Protein and processing reads Good with nutritional balance at Average, both shaped by the cereal blend behind the meat and by protein finishing at 25.0% of dry matter. For a settled adult of a big breed with no particular complications, that is a perfectly sound place to land.

Ingredients, as declared: salmon (18%), dried chicken and turkey (a natural source of glucosamine, chondroitin and taurine), barley (18%), maize, oats, sorghum, dried beet pulp (3%), chicken gravy, pork fat, sunflower oil, minerals (including sodium hexametaphosphate 0.35%), fructooligosaccharides (0.25%, a natural prebiotic), brewer's dried yeast (a natural source of B-vitamins and selenium), glucosamine (from animal tissues) (0.04%).

Salmon at 18% opens the list, which is worth noticing on a fish flavoured kibble built around a cereal base. It is named to a species too, not left as the catch all word fish, so what is in the bowl is clear. Dried chicken and turkey follows. Because its water is long gone, that entry is doing at least as much for the finished protein as the salmon ahead of it.

Barley matches the salmon at 18% and is one of the better cereals for a dog, digesting easily once cooked and bringing fibre along with selenium and copper. Oats sit behind it in the same helpful category. Maize and sorghum are the workhorses, plain starch that binds a kibble together and adds little else, though sorghum at least brings no gluten with it.

The fats are split between pork fat and sunflower oil. Sunflower oil is one of the gentler oils used in dog food, with little saturated fat and a natural helping of vitamin E. Working with the salmon, it gives the recipe a decent spread of the fatty acids that skin and coat draw on.

The label does not print a moisture figure, so the dry matter column here works from the 8% standard for a dry food. On that basis protein converts to 25.0% and carbohydrate to 50.7%, which sits above the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. Energy is an estimate rather than a declared figure and lands around 354 kcal per 100 grams.

Further down sits fructooligosaccharides at 0.25%, a prebiotic that the large intestine's good bacteria live on. The fibre comes from beet pulp at 3%, and brewer's dried yeast contributes B vitamins and selenium. Glucosamine from animal tissues is added at 0.04%, over and above whatever the poultry meal already brings, and sodium hexametaphosphate at 0.35% is there to make it harder for plaque to set into tartar.

Calcium works out at 1.41% of dry matter, a comfortable adult figure for a large dog. The additive panel is dosed in print with vitamin E at 250mg per kilo, zinc at 62.5mg, L-carnitine at 50mg and beta-carotene at 5mg.

£3.75 a kilo, in a single 12kg bag.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at £0.89 a day and about 237 grams, on an assumed requirement of around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Scale the figure to your own dog, since a large breed will of course eat rather more than that.