Leader Adult Medium Breed review

Our scoring puts this in the Good band, and the middle of the adult dry shelf sits there too. Read it as steady centre ground. The pillars split: transparency reads Excellent and value Good, while protein and processing and nutritional balance both come back Average. The reasons are plain enough: 26% dehydrated chicken declared, a carbohydrate load a shade above the usual dry food level, and a label that prints the meat percentage but little about its origin. For a medium dog on a simple, repeatable diet, that adds up to a perfectly sound everyday bag.

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.

First on the list is dehydrated chicken at 26%, and the useful word there is dehydrated. This is meat with its water already driven off, so what the label says and what your dog actually eats are near enough the same. Put the same number on fresh meat and it would not hold up that way. Chicken fat follows further down as the fat source, named to its species rather than left as a generic animal fat.

Behind the meat come the two rices, brown and white, with dehulled oats. Oats are the most interesting of the three, bringing dietary fibre along with manganese and B vitamins, and cooking down into something most dogs handle easily. The cereal side is doing real work here: carbohydrate works out at 54.3% of dry matter where the typical adult dry food sits at 46.2%.

The omega comes from linseed, and it goes in whole. That is worth noting. It supplies omega 3 in the plant form. A dog converts that into the versions skin and coat use, and the conversion is slower than taking them ready made from fish oil. Give a coat a few weeks on the food before you judge the difference.

This recipe finds its personality in the small print. Chicory inulin is the prebiotic here, food for the bacteria already living in the gut. Dried cranberry and beetroot bring antioxidants. Yucca schidigera earns its long reputation out on the lawn, where the smell is concerned. Rosemary is quietly at work too, holding off the day the fats go rancid. The label confirms preservation is by tocopherol-rich extracts, with nothing synthetic involved.

Near the end of the list, where the smallest inclusions live, sit glucosamine hydrochloride and chondroitin sulphate, neither with a declared amount. Treat them as a helpful nudge for a dog with hard-working joints, with no measured dose behind them. The trace minerals are more forthcoming. Zinc arrives twice, as 85 mg of the oxide and 175 mg of an amino acid chelate per kilo. A dog gets more out of the chelated form.

The bags are 2kg and 12kg, at £3.33 a kilo.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs around 243 grams a day, which works out at £0.81 a day. That 243 grams assumes about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own table is written for a less active dog, asking 170 grams at 14kg and 187 grams at 16kg. Start somewhere between the two and let your dog's waistline settle the argument.