Leader Adult Large Breed review

This one lands on a Good reading. The middle of the adult dry food shelf sits there too. Protein finishes at 23.3% of dry matter and carbohydrate at 56.7%, the shape of a rice led recipe and not a meat led one. The joint pair at the end of the list arrives with no figure to weigh. What lifts it is the honesty everywhere else. The chicken is named and dehydrated rather than hidden in a derivative, the fat is named chicken fat rather than an anonymous blend, and the trace mineral panel is itemised in full. Protein and processing reads Average and nutritional balance Poor, while transparency reads Excellent and value Good.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated Chicken (26%), Brown Rice, White Rice, Chicken Fat, Dehulled Oats, Whole Linseed, Minerals, Alfalfa, Hydrolysed Liver Protein, Yeast Extract, Chicory Inulin, Dried Cranberries, Dried Beetroot, Rosemary, Ginger, Turmeric, Glucosamine Hydrochloride, Yucca schidigera, Chondroitin Sulphate.

Dehydrated chicken at 26% is the first entry. That word, dehydrated, is the one that matters most. That quarter of the bag arrives dry, as concentrated protein. Nothing there will shrink in the oven. Chicken fat further down is named too. Plenty of labels at this shape never bother.

Brown rice, white rice and dehulled oats make up the starch side. Dehulled is a small kindness on the oats, the husk taken off to make them easier going, and oats bring manganese and magnesium along with B vitamins. Crude fibre is declared at only 2.0%, low for a dry food, although chicory inulin and alfalfa add soluble fibre that the crude figure does not capture.

Whole linseed is the omega source, and being whole it brings its own fibre and antioxidants along with the plant form of omega 3. No fish oil appears at any point on the list, and the recipe stays fish free from top to bottom.

The end of the list reads like a wellness shelf: dried cranberries, dried beetroot, ginger, turmeric and rosemary, with yucca schidigera for stool odour. Cranberry is the one with the strongest reputation, and inulin from chicory root is the entry most likely to do something a dog would notice. These are pleasant additions. The recipe would stand on its chicken and rice without them.

Glucosamine hydrochloride and chondroitin sulphate close the list. On a large breed food that pair is just the thing to find on a label. Neither carries a milligram figure, though, and what lands in the bowl is left for you to guess. Hydrolysed liver protein sits a little further up as a palatant, doing the job of making a fairly plain kibble taste of something worth finishing.

Zinc is supplied twice, 79 mg as the oxide and 162.5 mg in a chelated form per kilo. Copper sulphate at 28 mg and calcium iodate at 2.4 mg round out a trace panel that is declared in full. Preservation is handled by tocopherol rich extracts of natural origin.

£3.33 a kilo. Bags are 2kg and 12kg.

Per day, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 249 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which comes to £0.83 a day. Being a large breed recipe, it will mostly be fed to dogs bigger than the reference dog. The label's own table starts at 225 grams for a 20kg dog and climbs from there. The energy figure behind these sums is our estimate, so treat the result as a guide.