JosiDog Mini review

Our scoring puts this in the Average band. The middle of the adult dry category reads a band above. Even so, plenty of dogs are already eating happily on food much like this. Everything behind that position is printed on the pack. Maize is the biggest single entry, the meat arrives as dried protein rather than fresh, and most of the poultry goes unnamed by species. What it does well is stay steady. The analysis holds together, the trace minerals come with amounts beside them, and there is no filler hiding behind a long botanical tail.

Ingredients, as declared: whole grain maize; dried poultry protein; rice; beet fibre; poultry fat; dried duck protein; hydrolysed poultry protein; minerals; yeast

Whole grain maize opens the list. Most of what is in the bag, then, is cereal. Whole grain is the better form of it, keeping the bran and germ rather than stripping them back to starch, and cooked maize is digested perfectly well by most dogs. Rice sits third and does a similar job with a gentler reputation on delicate stomachs.

Dried poultry protein is the main meat entry, and dried is the useful word in it. The water is gone before it reaches the mixer, so the declared share and the share in the finished kibble are much the same. Protein converts to 28.3% of dry matter, a sound adult level. The naming is the limitation. Poultry takes in chicken, turkey, duck or goose, so the label cannot settle whether one particular bird is in the bag.

Duck does get named on its own terms as dried duck protein. Most dogs digest duck easily and eat it with enthusiasm. Hydrolysed poultry protein further down is a palatant, protein broken into small savoury fragments that a small dog finds hard to walk past. Poultry fat is named to the family, not the bird. That beats an anonymous animal fat, without being the full picture.

Beet fibre and yeast do the quiet gut work. Beet fibre is a gently fermentable fibre that helps stools keep their shape. Yeast is a good source of B vitamins, and it is where the prebiotic mannan oligosaccharides used across the category come from. Sitting last on the list, though, it is a modest inclusion. Carbohydrate is estimated at 49.7% of dry matter against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food, so cereal carries a fair amount here.

The added trace minerals come with doses beside them. Zinc arrives as a glycine chelate at 160 mg per kilo, a form a gut usually absorbs better than a plain sulphate. Iron runs at 200 mg and manganese at 16 mg per kilo, with vitamin E at 220 mg to keep the fats stable.

£2.70 a kilo. It is bagged in 900g, in packs of five 900g bags, in three-packs of 2.7kg and in a 10kg sack.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 233 grams a day of this, which comes to £0.63. That is worked from roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own table is drawn around smaller dogs and asks 150 grams at 10kg. Let the waistline set the portion.