Happy Dog NaturCroq: Chicken & Rice review

Scores here spread wider than the shared design would lead you to expect. Nine of the ten settle in our Average band, a step under the Good band the typical adult dry food occupies. Beef & Rice climbs clear of the rest into that Good band, with protein and processing Good, value in step, and nutritional balance and transparency Average.

The pattern behind the lower scores is consistent: cereal high on the list, a moderate declared meat share, and several working entries that name a group where an animal belongs. None of that makes the food unsafe or unappetising, and plenty of dogs eat it happily for years. It simply means the label gives less to credit than a meat first recipe would.

The gap between Beef & Rice and the Lamb & Rice it most resembles is wider than the two analyses would suggest. Read those two ingredient lists side by side before choosing between them.

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry protein * (23%), rice flour (16%), whole grain maize, maize flour, whole grain barley, poultry fat, beet molasses schnitzel * (sugar-free), liver hydrolysate, apple pomace * (1.3%), sunflower oil (0.8%), beef fat, yeast *, Potassium chloride, rapeseed oil (0.2%), carrots *, sodium chloride, green oats *, sunflowers *, cress *, parsley *, (total green herbs: 0.3%); *) dried

Every recipe is built on the same frame: a declared meat protein, a block of wheat and maize, poultry fat and beef fat for energy. Beet pulp and apple pomace follow, then a green tail of oats, cress and parsley. What changes from bag to bag is which animal is named and how much of it there is. That runs from salmon protein at 5% at one end to poultry protein at 23% in Chicken & Rice at the other.

Wheat sits high on most of these labels, in flour and wholegrain form. For most dogs it is an inexpensive and perfectly digestible starch. It is also one of the first things owners take out when a dog turns itchy, so check it first if your dog has history.

Poultry fat and beef fat are the energy sources across the line. Both are named, and many labels in this bracket do not manage that. Sunflower oil and canola oil appear in the smaller print on several recipes, and both are lighter oils with vitamin E of their own.

Poultry protein does a lot of quiet work here. It appears in the duck, lamb and salmon recipes as well as the poultry ones, and in most of them it outranks the animal named on the front. A dog avoiding chicken or turkey is not clear of them by choosing Duck & Rice. Haemoglobin brings iron rich, easily digested blood protein in dried form, and hydrolysed liver is a palatant; neither carries a species.

Meat meal appears on several recipes and is the workhorse of dry dog food. It is a dry rendered protein made from the animal parts we do not eat. It is a genuinely useful ingredient, and the only thing to note is that most of the time it arrives here without an animal attached.

The green tail is where the line gets its name. Cress, parsley and green oats come to 0.3% in total alongside dried sunflowers, with mussel meat, carrots and apple pomace nearby. These are finishing touches, and each recipe stands or falls on the meat and cereal above them.

The heaviest named meat entry in the range, poultry protein at 23%, with rice flour at 16% behind it and no wheat anywhere on the list. Protein reads 23% and energy 363 kcal per 100 grams.

Per kilo, most of the range is £2.59, with Puppy at £2.50, Chicken & Rice at £3.28, and Duck & Rice and Salmon & Rice both at £3.37. Bags come in 1kg, 11kg and 15kg depending on the recipe, and the larger sizes are also sold as twin packs.

Take a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The adult recipes work out at between 219 and 257 grams a day, or between £0.57 and £0.84. The label tables are a reasonable starting point and your dog's waistline is the better one.