Growling Tums Adult Small Breed review

Our reading puts this in the Average band, a step below the Good band where the typical adult dry food settles. The reasons are structural rather than alarming. Protein and processing reads Average with nutritional balance Poor behind it, because the meat is not tied to a species and cereal occupies as much of the recipe as the animal content does. Transparency reads Outstanding, helped by percentages on the two lead ingredients and a mineral panel given in milligrams rather than left to a single vitamins and minerals line. For a small adult dog with an easy stomach and no history of poultry trouble, it still does the everyday job it was built to do.

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry meal (min 26%), Rice (min 26%), barley, oats, poultry fat, beet pulp, fishmeal, brewers yeast, yucca, minerals and vitamins.

Poultry meal leads at a minimum of 26%. At the top of a list, meal is the form you want, because the water goes before the ingredient ever reaches the mixer. The finished kibble holds close to what is declared. Poultry is the word to watch: it stretches across chicken, duck, goose and turkey, and it leaves the maker free to change bird between batches.

Rice matches the meat at a minimum of 26%, with barley and oats behind it. All three cook down into starch a dog handles easily, and oats bring fibre and a broad spread of micronutrients with them. Barley carries gluten. If you keep gluten out of the house, that is the line to note.

Fishmeal appears further down as the second animal source. It is a concentrated ingredient, since fish meal holds very little water, and it brings amino acids and a strong savoury smell that small dogs tend to approve of. It also means the recipe cannot count as fish free.

The fibre work goes to beet pulp, and brewer's yeast adds B vitamins along with a savoury note. Yucca comes late on the list, generally included to make what comes out the other end easier to live with.

The added minerals are dosed on the pack, per kilo: iron at 50 mg, zinc at 50 mg and manganese at 35 mg. Copper is at 15 mg, iodine at 1 mg and selenium at 0.3 mg, with biotin at 150 mcg. Sulphates carry them, not chelates, and sulphates are the plainer of the two forms. That sums the recipe up as a whole.

£3.93 a kilo, sold in 3kg, 7.5kg, 10kg and 15kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 243 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £0.95 a day. A small breed dog gets through a good deal less than that. Read the figure as the shape of the maths, not as your dog's portion.