Happy Dog Professional: Sportive 26/16 review

The eight recipes cover a wide span. Gold Power alone reaches our Good band, level with the typical adult dry food, while six of the eight settle in our Average band and Basis is furthest back in Poor.

The dividing line is what each label chooses to declare, and it has nothing to do with safety or palatability. The recipes near the top commit to a named meat and a named starch, Gold Power most of all, and Puppy Mini Lamb & Rice puts its lamb share in print as well. The ones at the bottom describe their contents by category, and a category tells us nothing about which animal or which grain went in. Pillar readings follow the same split, with protein and processing reading Average on Gold Power and Poor on the category ones.

Worth saying plainly: these are foods designed to feed a lot of dogs consistently and economically, and thousands of dogs live well on them. The band words describe how much the label lets us verify, not how the dog in front of you will do.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals (includingwheat, maize, barley), meat and animal derivatives* (including animal proteinfrom poultry* (12 %)), oils and fats, derivatives of vegetable origin*(including apple pomace*), fish and fish derivatives*, yeasts*, minerals, seeds,vegetables*, algae*, milk and milk derivatives*, molluscs and crustaceans*(including mussel powder), vegetable protein extract*, eggs and egg derivatives*,fruits*, *) dried.

Seven of the eight labels are written in the legal category style: cereals, meat and animal derivatives, oils and fats, derivatives of vegetable origin. The bracketed detail is what rescues them, because each one names the share of poultry or lamb protein inside the meat bracket, from 7% on Basis up to 20% on Sensitive Grainfree. Everything outside that bracket stays a category, and a category can be filled differently from batch to batch.

Gold Power is the exception and it reads quite differently. It puts poultry protein at 30% with 12% of it chicken meat, then rice at 23% and rice flour at 23%, and it adds salmon meal at 4%. Naming things like that is what a label ought to do, and it is the clearest quality signal on this shelf.

Oils and fats runs through every recipe in the line and is the entry that gives away the least. It could be a good poultry fat or a blended vegetable oil, and the bag will not tell you which. On High Energy it is declared at 14%, which is a substantial share of the recipe to leave unnamed.

Fish is on all eight labels, as salmon meal at 4% on Gold Power, as fish meal at 2% on High Energy, and as fish and fish derivatives elsewhere. It is the omega 3 source across the range and it means none of these recipes is fish free.

The additive panels are dosed in print, which is where these labels are generous. Zinc runs from 70 mg to 110 mg per kilo across the line, copper from 10 mg to 14 mg, and iodine from 1.5 mg to 3 mg. Each recipe is set to its own figures.

Several recipes carry a working extra. Methionine is added on Basis, High Energy, Pro Body, Sportive and Sensitive Grainfree. L-carnitine comes in at 200 mg on Pro Body and Sensitive Grainfree, and taurine at 400 mg on Sensitive Grainfree. Puppy Mini Lamb & Rice carries L-tryptophan at 1000 mg, an amino acid used to take the edge off an unsettled dog.

Cereals led by wheat, maize and barley, with animal protein from poultry at 12%. Protein reads 26% and fat 16%, carbohydrate estimates at 45.0% of dry matter, and citric acid is added at 200 mg per kilo as an acidity regulator.

Per kilo, the line runs from £2.00 on Basis to £3.27 on Pro Body, with the rest between the two. Sacks are 20kg on most recipes, with Adult Mini at 18kg and Pro Body at 15kg.

Take the standard yardstick of a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition at about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the maintenance estimate). The adult recipes come out at between 206 and 235 grams a day, and between £0.44 and £0.71. The label tables here are written per bodyweight band, so read across and then let condition settle the final amount.