Husse Senior Ageing Support review

Our scale puts this one in the Good band, the same band the everyday adult dry food holds. The senior extras are what lift it: a dried meat entry at the front and a pair of joint supplements printed at real doses. The additive panel goes well past the legal minimum, with vitamin E at 500 mg and vitamin C at 425 mg per kilo. Nutritional balance reads Average, which is the carbohydrate figure speaking, with transparency Average alongside it and protein and processing and value both Good.

Ingredients, as declared: dried chicken, rice, brown rice, maize, peas, vegetable fibres (4%), linseed (3%), hydrolysed animal protein, animal fat, minerals, dried salmon, salmon oil (1%), brewer's yeast (1%), dried eggs, inulin (0.3%, source of fructo-oligosaccharides), marine algae, glucosamine (500 mg/kg), chondroitin sulphate (500 mg/kg).

Dried chicken opens the recipe. Declaring meat that way is honest in a kibble: the weight quoted is weight that survives drying, not water that leaves in the oven. Protein converts to 23.9% of dry matter and fat to 9.2%, the fat deliberately gentle for a dog whose walks are shorter than they were.

Rice, brown rice and maize do the starch work, with peas behind them. The bran stays on brown rice, so it brings along a little more fibre than the polished grain does. Carbohydrate is estimated at 57.6% of dry matter, above the 46.2% typical of an adult dry food. That is the trade for holding fat so low, and energy lands at an estimated 335 kcal per 100g.

The senior kit is dosed where you can read it. Glucosamine and chondroitin sulphate both arrive at 500 mg per kilo, taurine at 1000 mg, L-carnitine at 300 mg and beta-carotene at 1 mg. Vitamin E at 500 mg and vitamin C at 425 mg per kilo are generous by any standard, both being antioxidants that older bodies lean on more heavily.

Linseed at 3% and salmon oil at 1% divide the omega duty between the plant and the marine side, a sensible pairing. A dog can put the marine form to use directly. Dried salmon adds a second fish entry further up, one to note where fish is off the shopping list.

Inulin at 0.3% is a prebiotic fibre, food for the gut bacteria rather than for the dog, and brewer's yeast at 1% brings B vitamins with it. Vegetable fibres at 4% do the bulk of the fibre work. Calcium works out at 0.87% of dry matter, a comfortable adult level, and marine algae adds iodine and other trace minerals in a small way.

£5.00 a kilo, sold in a 12 kg bag and a 2 x 12 kg double.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs roughly 251 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That lands at £1.25 a day. The label's own table asks 130 to 320 grams for a dog between 10kg and 20kg, and any disagreement is for the waistline to settle.