Husse Pro Selekt review

Pro Selekt settles in our Good band, the same one the everyday adult dry food occupies. It gets there by doing ordinary things properly, with no headline to chase. The meat entry is dried rather than fresh, so the weight declared is weight that survives the oven. On a dry matter basis the analysis holds up: protein 25.0% and fat 14.1%. Every trace mineral is dosed on the label instead of being left to the imagination. Protein and processing, transparency and value all read Good, and nutritional balance sits at Average behind them.

Ingredients, as declared: dried chicken, maize (23%), maize meal, rice (14%), animal fat, vegetable fibres (5%), linseed (1.5%), hydrolysed animal protein.

Dried chicken opens the list, and dried is the useful word. Fresh meat entries lose most of their weight in the oven, so a dried entry at the front means the protein you are reading about is protein that reached the finished kibble. It converts to 25.0% of dry matter with fat at 14.1%, a comfortable everyday balance for an adult dog. Energy is declared at 385 kcal per 100g against the 357 typical, so bowls run a little smaller than the bag size might suggest.

Maize at 23%, maize meal behind it and rice at 14% do the carrying. Maize is a workhorse cereal with no pretensions to luxury. It holds a kibble together and supplies energy at a sensible level of digestibility. Where 46.2% is typical for an adult dry food, carbohydrate here works out at 52.8% of dry matter, so the plants are carrying a fair share. Wheat, the cereal that gets named most often when a dog reacts to something, is absent altogether.

Vegetable fibres at 5% is the consumer-friendly name a label usually gives to beet pulp. Its job is gut regularity, not nutrition, and crude fibre lands at 2.7% of dry matter.

The omega source is linseed at 1.5%, the only oil-bearing seed on the list. It supplies omega 3 in its plant form. A dog must convert that into the versions that show in skin and coat, and conversion is slower than taking them ready made from a marine oil. Allow a coat a few weeks to answer. The upside is that no fish appears in the bag at all, which is genuinely handy if you are keeping your dog off it.

Hydrolysed animal protein sits at the end as a palatant, the entry that makes a plain kibble worth finishing. It names no species, as does the animal fat above it, so neither can be pinned to a particular bird or beast. The additive panel is thorough by contrast, with vitamin E at 145 mg and vitamin C at 90 mg per kilo and iron, iodine, copper, manganese, zinc and selenium each dosed in print. Sepiolite at 10 g per kilo is a clay used as a processing aid and does nothing nutritional.

£2.50 a kilo, sold as a single 15 kg bag or as a 2 x 15 kg double.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 218 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £0.55 a day. For a dog of 10kg to 20kg the label's own table asks 110 to 260 grams, and the waistline can settle any difference between the two.