Gentle Small Bites review

Gentle earns its Good band the honest way, on ingredients you can name one by one and an analysis with nothing hiding in it, level with the typical adult dry food. The transparency reading is Outstanding, protein and processing and value both come out Good, and nutritional balance sits at Average. What stops it climbing higher is the size of the carbohydrate share and a meat total that reads well without being enormous.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried Ground Chicken Meat (28%), Brown Rice (thermally pre-treated)(28%), Dried Ground Duck Meat (9%), Herring Oil (6.5%), Maize Germ (5%), Rice Germ (5%), Rapeseed Oil (3%), Linseed Oil (3%), Beet Vulgaris (3%), Sea Algae (2%), Dried Vegetable Mixture (parsnip, chard, celery, chicory, parsley roots) (1.5%), Dried Herb Mixture (stinging nettle, fennel, caraway, chamomile) (1%), Dried Egg Yolk (1%), Yucca Schidigera (dried and ground) (1%), Silica (0.8%), Green Mineral Clay (0.6%), Green Lipped Mussel Meat (0.5%)

The meat entries are dried ground chicken at 28% and dried ground duck at 9%. Dried is what makes those figures worth reading. The water is already out of both before they go in, so those percentages hold their value through cooking where a fresh meat percentage cannot. Protein finishes at 29.1% of dry matter.

Brown rice at 28% carries the label term thermally pre-treated, and all that means is cooked before it joins the mix. It is among the gentlest of the common cereals. Maize germ and rice germ at 5% each are the growing bud of the grain, not the starchy endosperm, so what they bring is oils and vitamins in place of bulk carbohydrate.

Three separate oils do the fat work: herring oil at 6.5% for marine omega 3, with rapeseed and linseed oils at 3% each behind it. Herring is named to species, which is more than most fish oil entries manage. Dried egg yolk at 1% adds a little very digestible protein on top.

This label does its real talking at the tail of the list. A dried vegetable mixture of parsnip, chard, celery, chicory and parsley roots comes in at 1.5%, with a dried herb mixture of stinging nettle, fennel, caraway and chamomile at 1%. Then sea algae at 2%, yucca at 1% and green lipped mussel meat at 0.5%. The mussel is the joint entry, the chicory brings inulin as a prebiotic, and not one of them is left as an unnamed category.

Two entries here will be unfamiliar to most owners: silica at 0.8% and green mineral clay at 0.6%. Both are mineral binders, there to help the kibble hold its shape and to firm up the stools. They are inert rather than nutritional, and at those percentages they change nothing about how the food feeds.

The added minerals come as glycine chelates, generally the better absorbed form. Each one is dosed: zinc at 62.5 mg, manganese at 52 mg, copper at 16 mg, iodine at 0.3 mg and selenium at 150 mcg per kilo. Vitamin C at 140 mg and choline chloride at 2000 mg sit alongside them. Calcium comes out at 1.36% of dry matter.

£6.00 a kilo, sold in 5kg bags, with three bag and six bag options as well.

A 15kg adult in moderate condition would eat about 246 grams a day on the standard maintenance estimate of 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75), which puts the daily figure at £1.47. Most dogs on this food are much smaller than that. The label asks 60 grams a day for a 5kg adult and 120 grams for a 10kg one. A small dog's daily figure is a fraction of the fifteen kilo sum.