Flourish Finest: Chicken, Sweet Potato & Herbs review

This one reaches our Good band, which is also where the typical adult dry food settles. What makes it work is thoroughness: a named animal supplies more than half the recipe with its split printed, and the mineral panel is dosed in full. Estimated carbohydrate is 43.0% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical, with calcium held at 1.52% of dry matter. Transparency reads Outstanding, and protein and processing, nutritional balance and value all read Good. This is a well made small breed food, if not an inventive one, and that is meant as a compliment.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 55% (including Freshly Prepared Chicken 31%, Dried Chicken 21% & Chicken Stock 3%), Sweet Potato (26%), Peas (6%), Potato, Beet Pulp, Linseed, Omega 3 Supplement, Minerals, Vitamins, Vegetable Stock, Marjoram, Basil, Oregano, Sage, Thyme, Parsley, Fructooligosaccharides (FOS, 96 mg/kg), Mannanoligosaccharides (MOS, 24 mg/kg)

Chicken at 55% breaks down as 31% freshly prepared, 21% dried and 3% stock. Printing that split is the useful part. Freshly prepared chicken is largely water by weight, and the oven removes it. The 21% dried share is what carries protein into the kibble. The analysis settles at 27.0% protein, or 29.3% of dry matter.

No cereal grain appears in the recipe. Sweet potato at 26% is the biggest plant entry, with peas at 6% and potato after it. Whole peas at that modest level are a genuine nutritional contribution rather than a bulking agent, which is the distinction worth drawing whenever peas turn up in a grain free food.

Linseed is the omega source you can actually see, a seed rich in the plant form of omega 3 and in soluble fibre. It is not the same molecule a dog takes from fish oil and the body converts it slowly, so treat it as steady support rather than a quick fix for a dull coat. The unnamed omega 3 supplement sits alongside it, and because it names no source, a dog on a fish exclusion cannot be guaranteed anything here.

The herbs are the flourish this range is named for. They are basil, marjoram, oregano, parsley, sage and thyme, in for aroma and for the small antioxidant contribution that comes with them. No recipe is nutritionally better for containing them. What they do is make the bowl smell interesting to a little dog with a little appetite.

Fructooligosaccharides at 96 mg/kg and mannanoligosaccharides at 24 mg/kg are the prebiotic pair, both dosed in print and both aimed at the bacteria in the large intestine. Beet pulp near the front of the list handles the fermentable fibre, and crude fibre is declared at 4.0%, which is generous for a kibble and helpful for a small dog prone to loose stools.

The mineral panel is complete and quantified: zinc at 50 mg, iron at 50 mg, manganese at 35 mg, copper at 15 mg, iodine at 1 mg and selenium at 0.3 mg per kilo. They come as sulphates, the standard form, and the selenium as sodium selenite, which is what the great majority of dry foods use. Energy lands at 366 kcal per 100 grams against 357 for the typical adult dry food.

£5.33 a kilo, sold in a 6 kg bag.

A 15kg adult in moderate condition would eat about 230 grams a day here, which comes to £1.22. That works back from an energy need of roughly 840 kcal daily (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance sum). Most dogs eating this are smaller than a 15kg adult, so scale the figure down to the dog you actually have.