Lifelong Dry Adult For Small Breeds: Chicken & Rice review

This finishes in our Good band, the band that also holds the typical adult dry food, and the analysis is what puts it there. Protein converts to 30.0% of dry matter, a good figure for a dry food, and carbohydrate to 40.6%, comfortably under the 46.2% that an adult dry food usually carries. The label still leaves a few entries loosely named. The fat is poultry with no bird attached, the hydrolysed proteins pin down pork but not the bird beside it, and maize appears in two forms. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Good, with transparency Outstanding and value Good alongside them. For a small adult dog with no particular sensitivities, the numbers underneath this label are the ones that matter, and they are sound.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated Chicken Protein (18%), Rice (18%), Fresh Chicken (5%), Maize, Poultry Fat, Maize Protein, Dried Peas, Hydrolysed Pork and Poultry Proteins, Beet Pulp, Minerals, Dried Carrot, Brewer's Yeast, Linseed (0.7%), Fructo-oligosaccharides, Yeast Cell Walls (0.05%) (source of Mannan-oligosaccharides and β-glucans), Yucca Schidigera, Glucosamine Hydrochloride (0.02%), Chondroitin Sulphate (0.01%).

The list opens with dehydrated chicken protein at 18%, and fresh chicken at 5% sits a few places down. Its water has already gone, so most of that 18% survives into the finished kibble. The analysis bears it out. At 30.0% of dry matter, the protein is a strong figure for a dry food of any description.

Rice matches the meal at 18% and maize sits behind it, with maize protein further down again. Despite that, the starch load stays modest, with carbohydrate estimated at 40.6% of dry matter against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food. A maize heavy ingredients list usually delivers the opposite, which makes this the most encouraging number on the page.

The omega 3 here is linseed at 0.7%. A dog works it into the skin and coat active types slowly, because it arrives in plant form. A coat needs a couple of months to answer, not a fortnight, and it will be doing its work quietly the whole time.

The vegetable side is dried peas, dried carrot and beet pulp, and brewer's yeast brings B vitamins along with every amino acid. The prebiotic job is shared between fructo-oligosaccharides and the yeast cell walls at 0.05%, which supply mannan-oligosaccharides and beta glucans. Both come at the same job from different directions, and the useful bacteria lower down the gut are the beneficiaries.

Glucosamine hydrochloride at 0.02% and chondroitin sulphate at 0.01% close the list with their percentages printed. The amounts are small, but printing them at all is honest labelling and more than a good many brands manage. Taurine at 1300 mg per kilo, biotin at 10000 μg and vitamin C at 150 mg are declared as well, and none of those is required in a complete dry food.

The soft spot is naming. Poultry fat could have come from any domestic bird, and the hydrolysed pork and poultry proteins identify one of their two sources but not the other. For most dogs this changes nothing at all, and the palatant is doing a real job on a small dog with opinions. This matters for a narrow group of dogs: the ones whose owner needs to know exactly which animal is causing a reaction.

£2.90 a kilo, sold in a 3 kg bag.

On the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75, a 15kg adult in moderate condition needs about 840 kcal a day, which here means around 223 grams and £0.65 a day. A small breed dog will be well under that weight and will eat a good deal less, so use the rate for comparison and portion to the dog.