Leader Senior Small Breed review

Our reading lands this in the Good band, which is where the everyday adult dry food sits as well. Its strengths and its limits are equally easy to see. Chicken is named on this label and given in dried form at 27%, and the vitamin and trace panel is dosed in full. Protein converts to a respectable 25.6% of dry matter, better than a low fat senior recipe usually manages. Against that, cereals carry an estimated 51.5% of dry matter as carbohydrate, and one animal entry goes unnamed. Protein and processing and nutritional balance each read Average, with transparency Excellent and value Good. For a small older dog with a decent appetite it is a straightforward, well rounded bowl.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated Chicken (27%), 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 27% leads, and the dried form matters. By then the water has gone, so the label figure and the bowl figure are near enough the same. Protein converts to 25.6% of dry matter and fat to 13.3%, a more substantial pairing than many senior recipes offer. It suits a small dog whose metabolism has not slowed nearly as much as its walks have.

The starch comes from dehulled oats and from rice in its brown and white forms, with carbohydrate estimated at 51.5% of dry matter against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food. On an older digestion rice is among the gentler cereals, and oats add soluble fibre of their own, so the plant side is not just filling the bag.

Whole linseed provides omega 3 in its plant form. Dogs convert it into the versions that skin and coat actually use fairly slowly, so the contribution is steady and not quick. On the back half of this label, few entries are more useful.

Dried cranberries earn a mention of their own. They are rich in vitamin C and antioxidants and carry a long association with urinary tract health, which is a subject that comes up more often as dogs get older. Dried beetroot sits alongside them. Chicory inulin comes just behind, feeding the large intestine's friendly bacteria.

Glucosamine hydrochloride and chondroitin sulphate are both present, with yucca schidigera between them and ginger and turmeric a little further up. No amount is printed against any of that group, so it reads as the recipe leaning in a helpful direction for older joints, not as a dosed supplement.

The added micronutrients are all printed with amounts against them. Iron is at 250.0 mg per kilo, with manganese at 65.0 mg, copper sulphate at 28.0 mg and iodine at 2.4 mg. Zinc is declared in two forms, 97.2 mg of the oxide and 200.0 mg of an amino acid chelate. The chelate is the more absorbable route in. Selenium comes as sodium selenite at 0.3 mg, the standard choice across the market rather than the organic yeast version, and the vitamin panel gives figures for A, D3 and E as well.

£5.00 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 6kg bags.

Take a 15kg adult in moderate condition at about 840 kcal a day, using 110 × bodyweight^0.75 as the standard maintenance estimate, and the bowl comes to roughly 244 grams and £1.22 a day. Almost every dog eating this will be far smaller and will eat far less, so use that figure to compare rather than to portion.