Happy Dog Sport Adult review

Our reading puts this in the Good band, level with the typical adult dry food, and what stands between it and a higher reading is not the analysis. Naming accounts for almost all of it. Protein and processing reads Good because the largest meat entry is a collective one and the poultry never becomes a species, and the same vagueness runs through the fat and the greaves.

Where the numbers can be checked, the food earns its band comfortably. Nutritional balance, transparency and value all read Good, helped by how many percentages this label is willing to print. Protein converts to 30.4% of dry matter, carbohydrate to 42.4% against the 46.2% typical for adult dry food, and the energy figure is a declared 387 kcal per 100g rather than an estimate. Read it as a food that feeds an active dog properly and tells you less than you might like about where the meat came from.

Ingredients, as declared: Animal proteins * (17.5% poultry, 4% lamb), maize flour, maize, poultry fat, rice flour, barley, hemoglobin *, fish meal (4%, of which 50% salmon meal), greaves, liver hydrolysate, sunflower oil, beet molasses pulp * (desugared), Apple pomace *, rapeseed oil, potassium chloride, yeast *, sodium chloride, seaweed *, flaxseed (0.15%), dried whole egg (0.1%), mussel meat * (0.02%), yeast * (extracted), milk thistle, artichoke, Dandelion, ginger (0.012%), birch leaves, nettle, chamomile, coriander, rosemary, sage, licorice root, thyme, (total dry herbs: 0.15%); *) dried.

The meat is declared as animal proteins at 17.5% poultry and 4% lamb, both of them dried. Dried counts in the right direction here. The water is out of it before the ingredient is weighed, so a dried percentage translates into finished kibble far more directly than a fresh one of the same size. What they do not tell you is which bird the poultry was. That reticence is the label's real limitation, and it says nothing about the quality of the meat.

Behind the meat, maize flour and maize do the bulk of the carrying, with rice flour and barley behind them. Barley cooks down easily for a dog and brings fibre and trace minerals along with it. The finished starch load is lighter than most kibbles manage, with carbohydrate converting to 42.4% of dry matter where the typical adult dry food runs at 46.2%. The label declares no moisture, so those dry matter figures rest on the standard 8% assumption for a kibble.

Three entries tend to raise an eyebrow and mostly should not. Hemoglobin is dried blood protein, iron-rich and highly digestible. Greaves is the protein left behind once fat has been rendered out. Liver hydrolysate is in there for the smell, and it is what gets a dog across the room. All three are genuine animal protein, and all three name no species.

The marine omega comes from fish meal at 4%, half of it salmon meal. Flaxseed at 0.15% adds the plant form, and mussel meat at 0.02% is present in a quantity you would need a microscope to find. The added oils are sunflower and rapeseed, both sensible picks, with poultry fat sitting above them.

The herb list runs from milk thistle and artichoke through dandelion, ginger at 0.012% and on down to thyme. To its credit the label prints the total: 0.15% dry herbs across the lot. That is seasoning, and a recipe is no better for containing sage. The genuinely useful small print sits elsewhere. L-carnitine at 200 mg per kilo is a compound involved in turning fat into working energy, and a reasonable thing to find on a food with Sport on the bag. The mineral panel is dosed line by line too, with zinc and iron both at 105 mg per kilo.

£3.65 a kilo. The bag choices are 1kg and 14kg, with the 14kg also sold as a twin pack.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at about 217 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £0.79 a day. The label's own table puts a 15kg dog at 190 grams, so let your dog's waistline decide between the two.