Harringtons Just 6 Dry: Lamb review

Our scoring puts all three recipes in the Good band, level with the middle of the adult dry shelf. The short list, the fully named entries and the size of the declared meat block do most of that work. The plant side is what holds it back, with the starch load finishing above the category norm. It is a clean, legible everyday kibble. Meat-heavy is not what it sets out to be.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb & Salmon (50.5%, Freshly Prepared Lamb 22%, Dried Lamb 24%, Freshly Prepared Salmon Oil 3%, Freshly Prepared Lamb Gravy 1.5%), Dried Potato (20%), Sweet Potato (17%), Peas (11%), Rapeseed Oil (1%), Vitamins & Minerals

The meat block is 50.5% in all three recipes and the label is good enough to break it open. Chicken is 21% freshly prepared and 24% dried, lamb 22% fresh and 24% dried, salmon 23% fresh and 23% dried. Read the split carefully. Water is what the oven takes out of freshly prepared meat. The dried share is what actually survives into the finished kibble. Dried meat at close to a quarter of the recipe is a proper foundation, and protein lands between 23.9% and 26.1% of dry matter.

The binding is dried potato at 19% to 21% and sweet potato at 17% to 19%, with peas behind them from 9% to 11.5%. Nothing unusual stands in for cereal, and there is no wheat, no maize and no rice anywhere. Whole peas carry fibre and some plant protein of their own. Keep that in mind when you read the declared protein figure.

Fat and omega 3 come from the fish. Salmon oil appears in every recipe at 2% to 3%, with chicken fat alongside it in the chicken and a little rapeseed oil at 1% in the lamb and the salmon. A dog can use the omega 3 in salmon oil straight away, so even a modest declared percentage pulls its weight on skin and coat.

The mineral pack is dosed in print and shows a bit of thought. Zinc arrives twice, 34.9 mg as the sulphate and another 30 mg as an amino acid chelate per kilo. A dog's gut takes the chelated form up more readily. Selenium is doubled too, 0.13 mg as sodium selenite with 0.017 mg as selenised yeast, and including the yeast form is more than a label of this length needs to do. Manganese at 96.7 mg, iron at 40 mg, copper at 5 mg and iodine at 2.1 mg fill the rest out. Vitamin E is dosed at 500 mg, and the preservative is a tocopherol extract, nothing synthetic.

Lamb is 22% freshly prepared and 24% dried. Salmon oil comes up to 3% here to carry the omega side, with 1% rapeseed oil underneath. Peas step up to 11% here, and ash is the highest of the three at 8%, the usual signature of a red meat recipe bringing a little more bone with it.

£4.83 a kilo across all three recipes, sold in 2kg and 12kg bags.

Work from about 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The chicken and the salmon work out at roughly 244 grams a day and the lamb at 251 grams. That is between £1.18 and £1.21 a day. The bag's own table asks 180 to 360 grams for a dog of 10kg to 20kg, so let your dog's waistline decide where in that span they belong.