Happy Dog Nordic review

Set this next to the typical adult dry food and Nordic finishes level with it, in our Good band. What holds it back is naming. The animal fat is attributed to poultry and other animals with no species named, and the meat meal and the hydrolysed liver name nothing at all. Transparency reads Average as a result, while protein and processing and value both hold Good.

The analysis tells a friendlier story. Protein converts to 30.4% of dry matter and carbohydrate to 38.1%, a good deal under the 46.2% a typical adult dry food carries, and fat reaches 21.7% of dry matter. That richness is the point for a dog doing real work, and it is the thing to keep an eye on for a dog that mostly patrols the garden. Moisture is not declared, so those conversions take the 8% usual for a kibble, and the calorie figure is estimated rather than printed.

Ingredients, as declared: Animal proteins* (20% poultry, 4% lamb), maize flour, maize, animal fat (from poultry and other animals) rice flour, barley, haemoglobin*, fish meal (4%, of which 50% salmon meal), meat meal, hydrolysed liver, sunflower oil, beet pulp* (desugared), apple pomace*, canola seed oil, potassium chloride, yeasts*, sodium chloride, seaweed*, linseed (0.15%), dried whole egg (0.1%), mussel meat* (0.02%), yeasts* (extract), milk thistle, artichoke, dandelion, ginger (0.012%), birch leaves, stinging nettle, camomile, coriander, rosemary, sage, liquorice root, thyme, (total dried herbs: 0.14%); *) dried.

Dried animal proteins lead at 20% poultry and 4% lamb. Both are dried, so the declared figures are close to what actually reaches the finished kibble. That is the more honest way to put meat on a bag. Poultry stays a family name though, so you know the quantity without knowing the bird.

Maize flour and maize follow, with rice flour and barley behind them, and the total starch load ends up lower than most kibbles manage. Desugared beet pulp and apple pomace bring the fibre, and crude fibre reads a modest 2.5%.

This recipe makes its case on fat, declared at 20%. Sunflower oil and canola seed oil are both named further down, which is good to see. The main entry is animal fat from poultry and other animals, and that is as far as the label will go. At this level of inclusion a named source would have been worth a lot.

Haemoglobin sits unusually high on the list. It is a dried blood protein that is iron rich and highly digestible, used for the protein it brings as much as for the colour and savour. Hydrolysed liver just below it is a palatant, there to keep the kibble worth eating for a dog that could take or leave dry food.

The marine omega 3 comes from fish meal at 4%, half of it salmon meal, and linseed at 0.15% adds the plant form. Calcium works out at 1.68% of dry matter. The trace elements are dosed in print, with zinc and iron both at 105 mg per kilo, manganese at 25 mg, copper at 10 mg and iodine at 2 mg. L-carnitine is added at 200 mg.

The tail runs the familiar Happy Dog course of milk thistle, artichoke, dandelion and ginger, plus a row of herbs totalling 0.14%. Mussel meat sits at 0.02% and dried whole egg at 0.1%. Read it as the label's flourish; the meat and the fat above it are what carry this food.

£3.72 a kilo, sold in 14kg bags and in a twin pack of the same size.

On the usual basis of a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needing roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), that is about 215 grams a day and £0.80. Bigger dogs are the real audience, and the label's table runs from 145 grams at 11kg to 635 grams at 80kg. Read across from your dog's weight, then adjust for how hard they actually work.