Kirkland Signature Adult Dog review

Our banding puts this in the Good band, right alongside where the typical adult dry food finishes. Nothing exotic gets it there. Two chicken entries head the list, protein converts to 28.3% of dry matter, and the carbohydrate estimate is 44.5% against the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. A full panel of dosed trace minerals adds to that, and the lot simply stacks up in its favour. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Good, value sits with them, and transparency reads Outstanding, so no single strong leg is propping up a weak one.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (18%), chicken meal (18%), whole grain brown rice (16%), cracked pearled barley, chicken fat, dried whole egg, dried beet pulp*, potatoes, fish meal, flaxseed, natural flavour, brewers yeast, millet, carrots, peas, dried kelp, apples, cranberries, rosemary extract, parsley flake, dried chicory root (0.03%). *Produced from genetically modified dried beet pulp

Chicken is declared twice, 18% fresh and 18% as chicken meal, and printing both is the useful part. Fresh chicken is weighed wet, and the oven takes that weight off. That leaves the meal to carry protein into the finished kibble. With the two at the same figure the recipe is not leaning on a fresh weight to flatter itself. The analysis agrees: protein converts to 28.3% of dry matter and fat to 17.4%, with energy at 375 kcal per 100g.

Whole grain brown rice at 16% and cracked pearled barley do the binding, with potatoes and millet further down. A whole grain rice holds on to more of the original grain than a refined one does. Barley cooks down easily for most dogs, and it carries gluten, so a gluten-avoiding household will want to read that entry twice. Millet is the gentler choice of the three, gluten free and easy to digest.

Dried whole egg, fish meal and flaxseed make up the middle of the list and each is doing a real job. Egg is hard to beat for digestibility. Fish meal brings the marine omega 3s a chicken recipe would otherwise be short of, and flaxseed adds the plant form of the same fats alongside it.

The trace mineral panel is the quiet strength here. The chelated iron and zinc entries are declared at 150 mg per kilo each, with sulphate forms of both added on top. Manganese arrives in three forms at 14 mg per kilo, and copper is split between a chelate and a sulphate at 8 mg. A gut generally absorbs the chelated form most readily. Selenium at 0.4 mg and iodine at 1.5 mg are printed as well. Nothing on this panel is left to guesswork.

The tail is short and sensible rather than showy: carrots, peas, apples, cranberries, kelp and parsley, with rosemary extract doing the preserving and dried chicory root at 0.03% as a prebiotic. Of that lot, only chicory root does more than decorate: the inulin in it feeds the gut's useful bacteria. None of the tail is present in amounts that shift the nutrition, and this recipe does not need it to be, because the work is already done at the top of the list.

£2.84 a kilo, sold in one size only, a 12kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 224 grams a day on this food, which comes to £0.64 a day. The sum behind that is around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own table asks 193 grams for a dog of that weight. Where your dog lands between the two figures is a question for the waistline.