JosiDog Regular review

The Average band is where our reading places this, one step under the broad middle of the adult dry category, and that is an ordinary result, not a worrying one. The label explains it plainly enough. Maize is the largest single entry, the meat comes in dried and rendered forms, not fresh, and several working ingredients name no species. Set against that, the numbers are respectable for a cereal-based food. Protein converts to 27.2% of dry matter and the estimated carbohydrate to 45.0%, slightly under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. Most people would not expect that from a recipe headed by maize.

Ingredients, as declared: whole grain maize; dried poultry protein; poultry fat; beet fibre; meat and bone meal; hydrolysed animal protein; minerals; hydrolysed yeast

Whole grain maize takes first place and sets the character of the food. Kept whole it holds on to the bran and germ instead of arriving as bare starch, and once cooked it is a straightforward energy source for most dogs. There is no second cereal to spread the load, so if maize itself is the problem there is nowhere to hide.

Dried poultry protein is the meat entry that matters. It arrives dried, its water long gone, so the declared amount is much the same as the amount that survives into the kibble. That is what pushes protein to 27.2% of dry matter. Poultry fat sits third and takes fat to 16.3% of dry matter, which is generous for a general-purpose adult food and the reason the energy figure runs where it does.

A careful reader will stop at meat and bone meal. It is a rendered meal, and it brings a natural helping of calcium and phosphorus with it, which is a real job on a mineral panel. The definition is loose, though, and it could come from more or less any animal. The same applies to the hydrolysed animal protein further down, which is there as a palatant. Neither is a quality alarm; both simply mean the label cannot tell you which animals are in the bowl.

Beet fibre keeps stools in decent shape without loading the recipe with bulk, and crude fibre lands at a modest 2.8% of dry matter. Hydrolysed yeast closes the list, a source of B vitamins and of the yeast-derived prebiotics that are increasingly common in dog food, though its position means a small amount.

The vitamins and trace minerals are printed with quantities. Zinc is a glycine chelate at 160 mg per kilo, a form absorbed better than a plain mineral salt. Iron sits at 180 mg, copper at 20 mg and manganese at 16 mg per kilo. Vitamin E at 150 mg holds the fats steady in a recipe that carries a fair amount of them.

£2.33 a kilo, with the widest choice of bags in the range: 900g, five-packs of 900g, 10kg, twin 10kg and 15kg.

Using the standard maintenance estimate for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75), the bowl works out near 224 grams and £0.52 a day. The maker's own table asks 145 grams at 10kg and 230 grams at 20kg, so a 15kg dog sits between the two and the waistline settles the difference.