Lifestage Adult Small Breed review

This one reaches our Good band on quiet competence rather than on any single flourish. One named bird used throughout, a modest fat declaration and a mineral panel printed dose by dose add up between them. Transparency comes back Outstanding, protein and processing and nutritional balance sit at Average, and value reads Good. That same band holds the middle of the adult dry shelf, level with this one. Much of the placing is simply built out of ordinary things done properly.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey (30%), Turkey Meal (22%), Freshly Prepared Turkey (4%), Turkey Gravy (3%), Turkey Fat (1%), Brown Rice (22%), White Rice (22%), Oats (19%), Linseed (3%), Beet Pulp (2%), Alfalfa, Minerals, Seaweed, Omega 3 Supplement, Fructooligosaccharides (Fos), Chicory Extract, Dandelions, Yucca Extract

The turkey headline is spread across four entries and a fat, and turkey meal at 22% is the one that survives the oven intact. Cooking takes fresh meat down to a fraction of its starting weight, and water is what leaves. The dried meal of the same bird is what holds protein up in the finished kibble. As fed, protein reads 23.0%, converting to 25.3% of dry matter.

The cereal base is white rice and brown rice at 22% apiece, with oats at 19% behind them. Beet pulp at 2% brings the fibre that helps a small dog produce a tidy stool. This recipe leans on its cereal side and does not pretend otherwise. Estimated carbohydrate is 54.9% of dry matter, against 46.2% for the usual adult dry food.

The gut thinking is the nicest touch on the label. FOS and chicory extract are both prebiotics, aimed at the bacteria of the large intestine. Chicory is also where a good deal of commercial FOS is extracted from in the first place. Dandelion and yucca extract close the list as traditional finishing touches. Yucca has a long reputation for making what the dog leaves behind less pungent.

Linseed at 3% brings plant omega 3, slower to reach a coat than the marine kind but useful over a few weeks, and seaweed adds iodine for the thyroid. The separate omega 3 supplement is left unnamed, so its origin is the one thing on this list you cannot check by reading.

A printed dose sits against every added mineral, iron at 50 mg/kg and zinc at 100 mg/kg among them. They arrive as plain oxides and sulphates, with no chelated forms on the label. Selenium is supplied as sodium selenite, the form most manufacturers reach for.

£2.75 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 12kg bags.

Our standing guide uses a 15kg adult dog, bigger than the small breeds this bag is written for. On that basis it works out at about 260 grams a day and £0.71 a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). For the real audience the label is the better reference. It asks 30 to 45 grams a day for a dog of 1 to 2kg and 105 to 135 grams for one of 6 to 8kg. Once a dog passes 10kg the figure is 160 grams.