Leader Adult Slimline Small Breed review

It lands in our Good band, and a mid-table adult dry food lands there too, so a small dog switching across is not giving anything up in order to slim down. Transparency reads Excellent with value Good, while protein and processing reads Average and nutritional balance Poor. A slimming recipe pays for its lower fat with more starch, and that shows in the carbohydrate line and in a protein figure that sits below what a maintenance kibble would offer. Set against its actual purpose, letting a small dog eat a satisfying bowl of rather less, it does what it promises.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated Turkey (21%), Brown Rice, White Rice, Pea Starch, Potato Starch, Dehulled Oats, Chicken Fat, 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 turkey at 21% is the lead ingredient, and dried meat holds its declared share through the oven rather than cooking down to a fraction of it. Turkey suits a light recipe because it is lean to start with. The honest footnote is the chicken fat a few lines below, which means the food is not free of chicken.

Pea starch and potato starch are what make this the slimline recipe rather than the standard one. Both are close to pure carbohydrate and both bulk out the kibble without much energy attached, so a small dog still gets a bowl that looks like dinner. The trade shows in the carbohydrate estimate of 57.9% of dry matter, where the typical adult dry food runs at 46.2%.

Rice, both brown and white, and dehulled oats sit behind the starches, with alfalfa and crude fibre at 2.4% helping the food feel more filling than its energy figure suggests. Chicory inulin is the prebiotic, doing its work on the gut bacteria, and a settled digestion helps everything else along.

Fat at 8.0% as fed, or 8.9% of dry matter, is the number doing the real work here, and protein comes in at 21.0%. L-lysine is declared at 1,630 mg per kilo, propping up the amino acid side of a recipe that is deliberately light on meat. The plant form of omega 3 comes in with whole linseed.

Right at the end of the list, with no figures attached, come glucosamine hydrochloride and chondroitin sulphate. Read them as a gentle helping hand for small joints, not a measured supplement. Dried cranberry, beetroot, ginger and turmeric make up the decorative tail, with rosemary in as a natural antioxidant. Preservation is by tocopherol-rich extracts, the natural vitamin E route.

£5.00 a kilo, in 2kg and 6kg bags.

Working from a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, the day rate comes to roughly 259 grams and £1.30, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Most small dogs weigh a fair bit less than that. The label suggests 68 grams at 4kg and 115 grams at 8kg for a less active dog, and a dog that needs to slim should be fed for its goal weight.