Eukanuba Daily Care Sensitive Digestion review

This one lands level with the field rather than above it, in our Good band, which is where the typical adult dry food sits as well. The reading behind that is easy to follow. Declared meat is moderate at 23% dried plus 4% fresh, and protein converts to 24.5% of dry matter. Estimated carbohydrate reaches 52.3% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical of adult dry food, because rice at 23% is doing deliberate work here. A digestion food trades some protein density for gentleness, and this label has made that trade with its eyes open.

Ingredients, as declared: dried chicken and turkey (23% including chicken 16%, a natural source of glucosamine, chondroitin and taurine), rice (23%), maize, sorghum, pork fat, fresh chicken (4%), dried beet pulp (3.3%), chicken gravy, fish meal, linseed, minerals (including sodium hexametaphosphate 0.38%), dried whole egg, fructooligosaccharides (0.4%, a natural prebiotic), mannanoligosaccharides (0.14%, a natural prebiotic), microencapsulated Sodium Butyrate (0.1%).

First on the list, dried chicken and turkey at 23% has chicken broken out at 16% inside it. Going in dried, it keeps its weight through cooking. The fresh chicken lower down is declared at 4% and contributes rather less than a fresh meat entry sounds like it should. Protein settles at 24.5% of dry matter, moderate and not muscular, which is a normal shape for a food built around a calm gut.

Rice at 23% is as much the centrepiece as the meat is. It is the starch most often reached for when digestion is the problem, being simple to break down and light on the things that irritate a sore gut. Maize and sorghum fill in behind it, and sorghum has the useful quality of being gluten free, so the gluten load here is lighter than a wheat based kibble would carry.

Microencapsulated Sodium Butyrate at 0.1% is the most unusual entry on the label and the most interesting. Butyrate is a short chain fatty acid that the cells lining the large intestine use as their own fuel, normally produced in the gut when fibre ferments. The coating is what the word microencapsulated is telling you, since it lets the supplement travel further along before it is released.

Both prebiotics carry printed doses, fructooligosaccharides at 0.4% with mannanoligosaccharides at 0.14%, and dried beet pulp at 3.3% sits behind them as the fibre. Crude fibre is modest at 2.0% of dry matter, so this recipe is working on the kind of fibre rather than the amount of it, which is the gentler approach of the two.

Pork fat is the fat source, and naming the animal is better practice than the vaguer wording some labels settle for, though it does put a second species in the bowl. Fish meal and linseed cover omega 3 between them, with dried whole egg adding protein. Each trace mineral arrives as an amino acid chelate, and each is printed. Zinc comes in at 62.5mg, iron at 50mg, manganese at 10mg, copper at 5mg, iodine at 1.5mg and selenium at 0.1mg per kilo of food.

The bag comes in two sizes, a small one and a 12kg.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at roughly 235 grams a day, taking about 840 kcal a day as the target (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own table asks 240 to 280 grams a day for a 20kg dog, so start from the printed guide and let your dog's shape settle any difference.