Eukanuba Breed Specific Boxer Adult review

Our scoring reads this as a Good band food, and the middle of the adult dry shelf reads the same way. This is a solidly typical bag. Maize and wheat arrive immediately behind the poultry meal, and that front section of the list is what pegs it back. Transparency comes back Excellent, value Good. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both come back Average. Where the recipe does distinguish itself is much further down, in an additive panel considerably richer than most adult kibbles carry. That is a real difference, it is just not the part of a label our scoring weighs most heavily.

Ingredients, as declared: dried chicken and turkey (28% including chicken 11%, a natural source of glucosamine, chondroitin sulphate and taurine), maize, wheat, pork fat, sorghum, barley, fresh chicken (4%), dried beet pulp (2.9%), chicken gravy, minerals (including sodium hexametaphosphate 0.38%), dried whole egg, fish oil (a natural source of omega-3 fatty acids), fructooligosaccharides (0.29%, a natural prebiotic), linseed.

Dried chicken and turkey at 28% is the meat backbone, with chicken pinned at 11% of that figure and a further 4% arriving as fresh chicken. Fresh meat is mostly water before baking, so that 4% shrinks a good deal on the way through the oven. The dried entry is what puts protein at 26% on the label, or 28.3% of dry matter once the assumed 8% moisture is taken out.

The cereal side is maize and wheat first, then sorghum and barley. Barley is the friendliest of the four for a dog and sorghum has the small advantage of carrying no gluten. Wheat draws the most argument of the four. It is the grain that turns up most often when a dog cannot tolerate cereals. Keep that in mind if your dog has reacted to one before. Carbohydrate works out at 45.7% of dry matter, fractionally under the 46.2% typical for adult dry food.

The fats are pork fat for energy and fish oil for omega 3, with linseed adding the plant version behind it. Skin and coat draw more on the fish oil, and so do the joints. A dog can use marine omega 3 as it comes, while the plant form has to be converted first. Pork is named on the label, and that beats an unspecified animal fat.

The additive panel is where this bag earns its breed name. Beta-carotene is dosed at 30mg per kilo, vitamin C at 56mg, vitamin E at 250mg and zinc at 110mg, all well ahead of what an ordinary adult bag carries. Manganese comes in at 38mg and iron at 66mg, with selenium at 0.08mg. Taken together that reads as a deliberate antioxidant and skin mineral emphasis rather than a marketing flourish.

Taurine comes along with the poultry meal and is declared on the label, and L-carnitine is dosed at 50mg per kilo. Both are amino acid relatives with a bearing on heart muscle. On a food written for this breed, that is a fair thing to put in the small print. Glucosamine and chondroitin sulphate arrive the same way, from the meat itself and not as separate measured doses.

Fibre comes from beet pulp at 2.9%. Fructooligosaccharides at 0.29% feeds the bacteria of the large intestine. Sodium hexametaphosphate at 0.38% keeps plaque from setting hard on the teeth. Dried whole egg adds a little very digestible protein. Rosemary extract at 17mg and tea extract at 8.5mg finish the list as natural antioxidants. Calcium works out at 1.48% of dry matter and energy is estimated at around 366 kcal per 100 grams.

£3.01 a kilo, in a single 12kg bag.

A 15kg adult in moderate condition would eat roughly 230 grams a day at £0.69, assuming a requirement of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Most adult Boxers weigh well over that. Scale both figures up to the dog you actually have.