Iams Advanced Nutrition Adult Small & Medium Breed: Lamb review

Both bags finish in our Good band. The median adult dry food finishes there too, which puts this pair right in the middle of the shelf.

The detail is mostly encouraging. The dried meat share is the biggest in this part of the Iams line, and moisture is declared, not assumed. Estimated carbohydrate comes in slightly under the 46.2% typical of an adult dry food, at 44.9% of dry matter on the chicken list and 44.6% on the lamb. What keeps it in the middle is a cereal led back half of the list, plus mineral forms that are workmanlike and not chelated.

Ingredients, as declared: dried chicken and turkey 29% (including chicken 18%), barley, maize, pork fat, lamb (4%), dried beet pulp (2.5%), chicken gravy, minerals (including sodium hexametaphosphate 0.35%), linseed, fructooligosaccharides (0.2%), brewer's dried yeast.

Dried chicken and turkey heads both lists: 27% in the chicken recipe, 29% in the lamb. Chicken alone is printed at 16% and 18%. A dried meat has had its water driven out already, so that share reaches the bowl broadly intact. This pair therefore reads meatier than the large breed bags carrying the same name.

Barley and maize come next and carry the starch between them. There is no maize flour in either recipe, which is a small point in their favour, since a flour is the most refined form the grain arrives in.

Protein converts to 28.6% of dry matter and fat to 16.5%. Estimated carbohydrate is 44.9% on the chicken list, 44.6% on the lamb. Moisture is declared at 9%, so those conversions rest on the label, with nothing assumed. Few kibbles at this level offer that.

The chicken recipe adds fish oil. Long chain omega 3s are what a coat responds to fastest, and linseed sits behind it supplying the plant form. The lamb recipe leaves the fish oil out and relies on linseed alone, which makes it the fish free choice of the two.

Both bags share the same small print from here on. Tartar is the job of the sodium hexametaphosphate at 0.35%, chicken gravy is a palatant, and brewer's dried yeast brings B vitamins along with a little extra protein. Zinc is dosed at 115mg per kilo, iron at 69mg and vitamin E at 135mg, each printed on the panel with a figure beside it.

This bag lifts the dried chicken and turkey to 29%, chicken alone to 18%, and adds lamb at 4%, dropping both the fresh chicken and the fish oil in the process. That leaves it the fish free option of the two, with ash at 6.7% and estimated carbohydrate a touch lower at 44.6% of dry matter.

The chicken recipe is sold in 800g, 2kg, 3kg, 5kg and 12kg bags, and the lamb in 2kg, 3kg and 12kg.

The label asks 220 grams a day for a 15kg dog and 95 grams for a 5kg one, with the table running from 2kg dogs up to 25kg dogs. Our own maintenance estimate for that 15kg dog, about 840 kcal a day from 110 × bodyweight^0.75, lands at 232 grams, so bag and maths agree closely.