Leader Adult Sensitive Large Breed: Salmon review

Both bags come back in our Good band, which is the same ground the middle of the adult dry category occupies, so read this as centre-of-the-road food built for a fussier gut. The two finish so close together that the protein is what should decide between them. Transparency reads Excellent on both bags and value Good on each, level with where the two land overall, while protein and processing reads Average on each. The reasons repeat: a solid declared meat share, a rice base that pushes carbohydrate up, and a label that names its animal but says little about where it came from.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated Salmon (26%), Brown Rice, White Rice, Sunflower Oil, Potato Protein, Whole Linseed, Minerals, Alfalfa, Seaweed Meal, Hydrolysed Liver Protein, Yeast Extract, Chicory Inulin, Yucca Schidigera.

A dehydrated meat leads both recipes. Dehydrated is the word to hold on to. The moisture has already gone before mixing, so the percentage on the front holds through the oven. A fresh meat figure would not. Potato protein sits a few lines down and lifts the protein total without adding a second animal to the list.

Sunflower oil is the fat, and it is the single most useful decision on this label for a poultry-avoiding household. Recipes shaped like this one usually reach for chicken fat, and this one does not. Alongside it sits whole linseed, bringing omega 3 in the plant form. That is a slower road to a glossy coat than fish oil, but a real one.

Brown rice and white rice supply the starch. Wheat, maize and soya are nowhere on the list. Rice is the cereal most often chosen for sensitive recipes because it is bland and easily digested, and here it does that job without legume flours crowding in behind it.

The gut support is quietly sensible. Chicory inulin is the prebiotic, and what it feeds is the bacteria already resident in the gut. Yeast extract sits behind it, and seaweed meal brings iodine and trace minerals. Alfalfa brings a little fibre and plant protein. Yucca schidigera is the entry owners tend to notice out on the lawn.

Two amino acids are printed instead of being left to the ingredients to supply: L-lysine at 1,780 mg per kilo and L-tryptophan at 100 mg. Hydrolysed liver protein is the palatant, broken down so the food stays appealing to a dog whose appetite comes and goes. It is also the one entry on either label that never names its species.

Salmon at 26% dehydrated, the only version whose animal protein comes out of the sea. Protein reads 23.0% here, the higher of the two, with fat at 11.0% and estimated carbohydrate down to 51.6% of dry matter. Dogs that do better off land meats will find this the obvious one, bearing in mind that the hydrolysed liver protein is still unnamed.

The lamb is £3.33 a kilo and the salmon £4.55, both sold in 2kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 253 grams of the lamb a day, and 250 grams of the salmon. Those 253 and 250 gram figures assume around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The lamb then costs £0.84 a day and the salmon £1.14. A large breed eats more than that reference dog: the pack asks 225 grams at 20kg and 408 grams at 45kg for a less active dog.