GAIN Elite Big Dogs: Senior review

Two of the five finish in our Good band, level with where the typical adult dry food settles, and the other three come in just under them in our Average band. The shape of the reading is the same on all of them. A named dried meat opens the list at a useful percentage, then the cereals take a large share of the bag. On most of the recipes maize gluten meal lifts the protein figure with plant protein. The printed joint doses and the mineral complex are real credits, and every bag reads Excellent for transparency. Protein and processing sits at Average, and nutritional balance is Average on three of the bags and Poor on the light and the senior. What keeps the readings where they are is simply how much of each bowl the grain side ends up carrying.

Ingredients, as declared: Rice (min 20%), Dried Chicken & Turkey (min 18%), Wholegrain Maize, Dehulled Oats, Maize Flour, Dried Sugar Beet Pulp, Hydrolysed Chicken Protein, Maize Gluten Meal, Poultry Fat, Linseed, Fishmeal, Salmon Oil, Sodium Chloride, Chicory FOS (min 0.3%), Potassium Chloride, TruCal Milk Mineral Complex (1,000mg/kg), Methylsulphonyl Methane (MSM 300mg/kg), Glucosamine Hydrochloride (300 mg/kg), Products from processing of plants.

Dried chicken and turkey opens four of the five lists, and dried meat is the form worth seeing at the top. The water is already out of it, so the protein on the label survives the oven and lands in the finished kibble. The salmon recipe puts dried salmon at a minimum of 24% in the same position, with hydrolysed salmon protein at 3.5% behind it.

Rice at a minimum of 20% or 21% leads the plant side, with wholegrain maize and dehulled oats following. Oats are a genuinely useful grain here, digestible once cooked and a good source of fibre and micronutrients, and rice sits easily with most dogs. Dried beet pulp appears on all five as the fibre, the leftover material from sugar production with the sugar taken out of it.

Maize gluten meal turns up on the poultry recipes. Maize milling leaves it behind, and it is there to raise the protein percentage. Plant protein of that kind does not do the same work for a dog as protein from meat. There is no cause for worry in it. The protein figure on the analysis simply is not all animal in origin.

TruCal, dosed at 1000 mg/kg on every recipe, is a milk mineral complex, and it brings calcium and phosphorus through in a dairy form. That is worth knowing if dairy is a live question in your house. Chicory supplies FOS, the prebiotic fibre that feeds the bacteria already living in a dog's large intestine, and linseed on the poultry recipes adds omega 3 from a seed alongside the salmon oil.

The joint pairing is glucosamine hydrochloride and MSM, both at 300 mg/kg, on all five bags. Neither is a cure for a worn hip, and the evidence on both is mixed. What they are is printed, with a figure against each one, and no paw logo standing in for it. On a food aimed at heavy frames that is the part worth crediting.

Rice moves ahead of the meat on this one, with dried chicken and turkey at a minimum of 18% and carbohydrate estimated at 58.9% of dry matter. Fat at 8.0% keeps it light for an older dog whose walks have shortened.

Sold in 3kg and 12kg bags for the adult, light, puppy and senior recipes. The bag size for the salmon is not listed.

As a guide, the label's own table asks 415 grams a day for a 30kg dog on the adult and senior recipes, 387 grams on the salmon and 380 grams on the light. Portions climb from there as the dog gets bigger.