GreenAcres Large Breed: Turkey & Rice review

The scoring lands this in our Good band, and the middle of the adult dry shelf sits in the same place, so it reads as a steady everyday choice and not a step up. Protein converts to 25.5% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 47.4%, against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food. The cereal side is doing a normal share of the work. Value reads Good here, protein and processing and transparency both settle at Good, and nutritional balance reads Average. The two things holding it level are ones a careful reader would spot for themselves. Chicken fat and poultry digest name a family instead of a species, and some of the protein total leans on pea protein.

Ingredients, as declared: Rice (22% Pearl Rice, 4.5% Brown Rice), Turkey Meal (26%), Oats (7.5%), Barley (7.5%), Chicken Fat, Linseed (4%), Poultry Digest (3%), Pea Protein, Dried Peas, Beet Pulp, Salmon Oil (1%), Alfalfa (1%), Seaweed (0.5%), Chicory Extract (0.1%), Parsley (0.1%), Nettle (0.1%), Potassium Chloride, Glucosamine (0.028%), Chondroitin (0.023%) Yucca Extract (0.02%).

Turkey meal at 26% is the engine of the recipe. The meal has been dried and ground already, before it ever reaches the mixer. Unlike fresh meat it sheds no water in the oven, so the printed share is near enough what the finished kibble holds. Turkey itself is easy on most stomachs and leaner than chicken, and food written for heavier dogs leans on it for exactly that reason.

The starch comes from cereal, with no pulses in it. Pearl rice at 22% leads, with oats and barley at 7.5% each and brown rice at 4.5% behind it. Rice is about as easy as starch gets for a dog to digest and oats bring useful soluble fibre. Barley carries gluten, which only matters if that is something you keep an eye on.

Fats and omegas are handled by chicken fat, linseed at 4% and salmon oil at 1%. Linseed's omega 3 is the plant version, and a dog's body converts it slowly, so the salmon oil is the faster acting half of that pairing. Chicken fat is highly digestible and dogs like it, though the bird it names is not the bird on the front of the bag.

The practical extras live at the tail of the list. Beet pulp works on stool quality, alfalfa at 1% and seaweed at 0.5% add minerals, and chicory extract at 0.1% feeds the gut's useful bacteria. Yucca extract at 0.02% is in there with kennel odour in mind. The joint pair of glucosamine at 0.028% and chondroitin at 0.023% is modest, but printing a figure at all puts it ahead of the labels that simply name the ingredient.

The panel prints a dose against every added mineral. Zinc is at 277.8 mg, iron at 133.3 mg, manganese at 93.8 mg, copper at 28 mg, iodine at 1.6 mg and selenium at 0.55 mg per kilo. They come as sulphates, the everyday form, with no chelates, and the doses are set generously to allow for that. Vitamin A is declared at 19000 IU and vitamin D3 at 1900 IU per kilo, with natural mixed tocopherols doing the preserving.

£4.29 a kilo, sold in 3kg and 12kg bags.

For scale, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 235 grams a day here, which comes to £1.01, on a maintenance estimate of roughly 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75). This food is written for dogs a good deal bigger than that, and its own chart on the bag begins at 23kg, so plan on more.