Heights Farm Adult Extra Joint Care: Chicken & Rice Cube review

Both recipes settle in our Good band, level with where the typical adult dry food is found. A named meat meal at the head of each list and a fat level that suits a working appetite are what hold them there. What stops them going further is the plant half. One list runs rice with maize behind it, the other rice with oats and barley, and carbohydrate lands at 47.1% and 45.5% of dry matter against the 46.2% usual for the category. Several of the more interesting extras also arrive without a declared dose, and a figure in print always reads stronger than a name on its own.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken Meal (26%), Rice (26%), Maize, Chicken Fat, Alfalfa, Full Fat Linseed, Peas, Yeast, Salmon Oil, Sodium Chloride, Glucosamine, Milk Thistle, Seaweed, Nettle, Yucca Schidigera, Kale, Beetroot, Carrot, Yeast, Dicalcium, Green Lipped Mussel, Rosemary, Mannan, Oligosaccharides.

Both recipes open with a meat meal at 26%, chicken in one and lamb in the other. A meal has been dried before it goes into the mixer. A declared 26% therefore still reads close to 26% in the finished kibble. Freshly prepared meat gives up most of that weight in the oven. Protein lands at 26.7% of dry matter in both, a respectable middle for a dry food, and fat at 15.6% is generous enough to keep a busy dog in condition.

Rice comes next in both, at 26% in the chicken recipe with maize behind it and at 25% in the lamb with oats at 10% and barley following. Oats and barley are the pair worth a look: each brings fibre, and each releases its energy more slowly. Barley is the one to check if gluten is off the menu for your dog. Maize is the plainer choice of the group and the one owners ask about most, though a dog with no reaction to it will digest it perfectly well once cooked.

The joint case is built from glucosamine and green lipped mussel, with milk thistle, nettle, seaweed, yucca, kale and beetroot filling out a long botanical tail. Green lipped mussel is the pick of them, a shellfish that carries its own marine omega 3s and is used specifically for stiff joints. None of these entries carries a percentage or a dose. Where each one sits on the list is the only guide you get.

Fat and omega 3 arrive from three directions: chicken fat for the animal fat, salmon oil for the marine omega 3s and full fat linseed for the plant kind. Mannan oligosaccharides close both lists. They are a prebiotic, food for the gut's own good bacteria, and the yeast further up the list is where they come from.

The additive panel is where these labels get generous. Zinc appears twice at 350 mg per kilo: an amino acid chelate as well as the plain sulphate. A dog takes the chelated form up more easily, and a zinc entry that size is much larger than a kibble of this description usually carries. Vitamin E sits at 250 mg per kilo, iron at 75 mg, manganese at 70 or 75 mg and copper at 30 mg. L-carnitine is dosed as well. The lamb recipe adds taurine on top, an amino acid the heart depends on. Selenium comes as sodium selenite, the industry workhorse. The yeast form is the better absorbed of the two.

Chicken meal at 26% with rice at 26% and maize behind it, pressed into a cube rather than a conventional kibble, which some dogs slow down for. In energy terms this is the denser of the pair, and its label is written for adults only. Carnitine is dosed at 135 mg per kilo, and carrot and dicalcium join the tail, the latter a plain calcium and phosphorus source rather than anything exotic.

The chicken is £3.50 a kilo and the lamb £3.57. Both come in 2kg and 15kg bags.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, reckon on about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is roughly 216 grams of the chicken, or 218 grams if the lamb is what you feed. That comes to £0.76 and £0.78 a day. These are dense kibbles and the bowl will look smaller than you may be used to. The chicken label asks 165 to 330 grams for a dog between 10kg and 25kg, and the waistline should settle the rest.