Happy Dog Sensible: Duck Grain-Free (France) review

There is not much daylight between these twelve. Eleven of them finish in our Average band, with the Canada recipe alone reaching the Good band where the typical adult dry food lands. The middle of the range is tightly packed; the Karibik sea fish and the India vegetarian come out furthest back, with protein and processing the pillar that holds them there. Rabbit & Lamb from Canada comes out highest of the range.

Across the shelf protein and processing reads Average on almost every bag, and that is the honest summary. These are simple, well made exclusion diets with moderate meat shares and a starch load on the high side, carbohydrate estimating between 45.1% and 56.5% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical. Keeping the animal list short means leaning on the plant side. A short, readable list is exactly the thing you are buying here, and no general nutrition measure has a column for it.

Not one of these twelve labels prints a moisture figure. The dry matter conversions here take the 8% a kibble usually carries, and several of the calorie figures are our estimates.

Ingredients, as declared: Potato*, duck protein* (23 %), oils and fats, beet pulp* (desugared), hydrolysed protein, apple pomace*, sodium chloride, yeasts* (extract). *dried.

The recipes come in two shapes. The simplest, France, Montana, Africa and Karibik, run to between eight and ten entries: a starch, the named animal, a fat, beet pulp with apple pomace, a little salt and a yeast extract. The rest build the familiar Happy Dog tail of seaweed, linseed, mussel meat and herbs on top of the same idea.

Potato does the carrying on the grain free recipes, often with potato protein behind it to lift the protein figure without introducing a second animal, which is a neat move on a limited ingredient food. Rice does the same job on the others, and Italian sweet chestnut flour at 26% is the genuinely unusual one, standing in for cereal on the Piemonte duck recipe.

Where these labels name one animal they largely mean it, up to a point. The named meat is the only species declared, but oils and fats, hydrolysed protein and hydrolysed liver all appear without a source, and any of those can carry material from another animal. For a dog with a mild sensitivity that will rarely matter. If a vet is running a formal elimination trial, bring it up with them before the trial starts.

Horse at 15%, ostrich at 15% and rabbit are the truly novel entries here, and they are much of the reason this range exists. A protein a dog has never eaten cannot be the one causing the trouble, which makes these recipes genuinely useful once the usual suspects have been ruled out.

DL-methionine is dosed at 3500 mg per kilo on the France and Karibik recipes, an amino acid that also acidifies the urine. Taurine is added to India, where there is no meat to supply it. Calcium, where the label gives enough to work it out, runs from 1.25% of dry matter on India up to 2.07% on Montana.

The vegetable and herb tails vary by country and are a pleasant touch at these doses. Andalucia brings peppers, tomatoes, olive leaves and courgettes to 0.5% in total, Greece runs a similar Mediterranean mix, and Toscana finishes with elderflowers, lavender and fennel among its 0.26% of dried herbs.

Duck protein at 23% on a potato base, eight entries in total and duck the only species named on the list. DL-methionine is dosed at 3500 mg per kilo and calcium works out at 1.36% of dry matter.

Per kilo, the range runs from £4.24 on the Lamb & Rice, Low Fat and Salmon & Rabbit recipes up to £6.06 on Montana. Bags go from 1kg for a trial up to 12.5kg for the main size, with a 2.8kg on India and a 4kg on Africa, and twin packs on several of the larger sizes.

Take a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing about 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. Daily portions land between 227 and 258 grams, according to which recipe you pick, at £0.99 to £1.54 a day. Portion by your dog's condition, not by the scoop.