Happy Dog Sensible Mini: Chicken & Trout XS (Mini Japan) review

All eight of these recipes finish in our Average band, a step under the typical adult dry food, with Mini Toscana reading highest and Mini Montana sitting a fair way behind the rest. Protein and processing reads Average right across the range, with transparency coming back Good on most of the eight and value Average throughout.

These are clean, short recipes with moderate meat shares and a decent amount of starch, doing a job a general nutrition measure has no column for. Mini Japan carries the largest declared meat share of the eight and the lowest carbohydrate estimate at 40.3% of dry matter, against the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. None of these labels declares moisture, so every dry matter conversion here takes 8%, the standard assumption for a kibble.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken meat* (22%), rice, rice flour, trout meal (7%), poultry fat, rice protein*, beet pulp* (desugared), linseed (2.6%), sunflower oil, apple pomace* (1.3%), hydrolysed liver, cellulose, fish hydrolysate*, potassium chloride, canola oil, maize, yeasts*, sodium chloride, seaweed* (0.27%), chicory powder, yeasts* (extract), yucca schidigera* (0.1%), mussel meat*, turmeric, milk thistle, artichoke, dandelion, ginger, birch leaves, stinging nettle, camomile, coriander, rosemary, sage, liquorice root, thyme, (total dried herbs: 0.16%); *) dried.

The plainest recipes here are Mini France, Mini Montana and Mini Africa. Each runs to eight or nine entries: potato, the named animal, potato protein, a fat, beet pulp, apple pomace, then salt and a yeast extract. Short lists are the whole point of the range, since a dog cannot react to something that was never put in.

Potato and rice split the starch duty between them, with oats and barley on the Ireland recipe and maize on the New Zealand and Toscana ones. Potato protein appears alongside potato on several labels, lifting the protein figure without bringing in a second animal, which is a sensible move on a limited ingredient food.

This is where the range's one caveat shows up again. A recipe that names a single animal is not quite a closed list, because the oils and fats, the hydrolysed protein and the hydrolysed liver all arrive without a species attached to them. A dog with a mild sensitivity will rarely be troubled by that. Tell your vet about it if you are running a proper trial.

Mini Japan is the outlier of the eight and the most generously built. Chicken meat is declared at 22% and named as meat rather than as a protein meal, trout meal adds 7%, and linseed at 2.6% is a serious dose of plant omega 3 by kibble standards. Turmeric and chicory powder close the list, along with a fish hydrolysate.

Taurine is dosed at 500 mg per kilo on Mini Montana and Mini Africa, and DL-methionine at 3600 mg on Mini Montana and 3200 mg on Mini France. Calcium runs from 1.52% of dry matter on Mini Japan up to 2.17% on Mini Montana, on the labels that print enough to work it out. Zinc reaches 135 mg per kilo on Mini Toscana and Mini Canada, part of it as an amino acid chelate.

Chicken meat at 22% and trout meal at 7%, the most generous meat declaration of the eight, with linseed at 2.6% and an extra small kibble. Carbohydrate estimates at 40.3% of dry matter, the lowest here, and calcium works out at 1.52%.

Per kilo, most of the range runs between £5.50 and £7.83, with the Chicken & Trout XS recipe at £12.30. Bags are 800g and 4kg on most recipes, with 10kg on the New Zealand, Ireland and Salmon recipes, and 1.3kg on Chicken & Trout XS.

On the usual basis of a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needing roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the maintenance estimate), portions come to between 227 and 259 grams a day. That works out at between £1.28 and £2.87. Almost every dog eating this range weighs a good deal less than 15kg, so the real daily figure will be well under that.