James Wellbeloved Adult Small Breed Dry: Turkey & Rice review

Our Good band holds the chicken, the lamb and the turkey, and the middle of the adult dry shelf finishes there too. The fish sits a step below them in our Average band. Chicken, lamb and turkey sit close enough together that the meat should decide it, not the order they fall in. Chicken and turkey declare the largest meat shares at 26.5%, the lamb carries the lowest estimated carbohydrate, and the fish alone names a meat that is entirely marine. Cereal is what stops the range going higher, because it fills more of each bag than the meat does.

Ingredients, as declared: dried turkey protein* (26.5%), naked oats*, brown rice* (13%), white rice* (13%), barley*, poultry fat*, sugar beet pulp*, whole linseed* (3.9%), turkey gravy, alfalfa meal*, tomato pomace*, minerals, seaweed* (0.5%), dried carrots*, dried vegetarian stock, fish oil, chicory extract* (0.1%), yucca extract* (0.02%). *Natural ingredient.

Three of the four recipes are near identical twins with the meat swapped. Dried chicken protein and dried turkey protein both lead at 26.5%, with dried fish protein at 24%. Behind each of them come naked oats or barley, with both rices at 13%, brown and white. The word to hold on to is dried. A dried meat percentage keeps its size through the oven, and a fresh one does not.

The lamb bag is written to a different pattern and reads as though it came out of another kitchen. Lamb meal leads at 26% with white rice at 23.6% behind it. The fat is lamb fat at 5.5% rather than poultry fat, sunflower oil joins in, and cranberry extract at 0.05% turns up near the end. Apart from the fish oil, every animal entry on that label is lamb, which makes it the most straightforward recipe here for a dog kept away from birds.

Fibre and gut support are handled quietly. Sugar beet pulp carries both soluble and insoluble fibre with the sugar already taken out, and alfalfa meal and tomato pomace add more. Chicory extract at 0.1% supplies inulin, food for the bacteria that live at the far end of the gut. Dried carrots bring antioxidants and vitamin A, and seaweed at 0.5% covers iodine.

Whole linseed at 3.9% in the chicken and turkey recipes is the plant omega 3 source, with fish oil adding the marine forms that skin and coat take up more directly. These labels use a glycine chelate for the zinc. A dog takes that form up more readily than a plain sulphate. That counts on a food a small dog eats very little of by weight.

None of these bags prints glucosamine or chondroitin. That is a fair enough choice on a food for small frames, which put less through their joints than a big dog does. Still worth knowing, though, if joint support was one of the things you came looking for.

Dried turkey protein at 26.5%, matching the chicken for meat share and following the same recipe with the bird swapped. The panel reads 25.3% protein and 13.7% fat, with carbohydrate estimated at 41.6% as fed and 45.2% of dry matter, at 366 kcal in every 100g. For a small dog whose system has objected to chicken, turkey is the way round it.

Per kilo, the fish is £5.40, the chicken £9.66, and the lamb and turkey £10.66 each. The chicken, lamb and turkey come in 1.5kg, 4.5kg and 7.5kg bags, and the fish in 7.5kg.

Work it through on a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The fish works out at £1.25 a day, the chicken at £2.19, the lamb at £2.48 and the turkey at £2.45. Most dogs eating this food are a fair bit smaller than that. For a 10kg dog the label asks 145 to 160 grams a day, and that is the more useful figure here.