Lifestage Naturals Senior Dog Food review

Average is the band this one finishes in, and it gets there without anything showy. A third of the recipe is declared fish, with the fresh and dried halves printed separately. You could read the whole list standing in the aisle, and no entry on it hides behind a category name. The typical adult dry food holds our Good band, so the honest declaration here is doing its work inside a plainer recipe, and it does not lift the food clear of the field. Average is the reading on protein and processing, on nutritional balance and on transparency, and that is fair for a recipe that tells you exactly what it is.

Ingredients, as declared: Fish (33.5%, of which freshly prepared white fish 15%, dried white fish 15%, fish gravy 3% and fish oil 0.5%), brown rice (16%), white rice (16%), barley (12%), peas, dried beet pulp (5%), chicken fat, pea protein, minerals, lucerne, dried seaweed (0.1%, omega 3 supplement), Yucca schidigera

The fish headline is built in two equal halves, 15% freshly prepared white fish and 15% dried white fish, and printing that split is the useful part. Fresh fish is mostly water long before it goes near an oven, so the dried half is what really lands in the finished kibble. An equal weight of it gives the protein a genuine backbone. Protein converts to 23.4% of dry matter, which is gentle rather than generous, the sort of level a settled older dog does perfectly well on.

Brown rice and white rice each take 16%, with barley at 12% between them, so grain is unapologetically the base of this kibble. Rice is about as easy as carbohydrate gets for most dogs once it is cooked, and barley brings fibre along with selenium and copper. The trade is bulk. Carbohydrate is estimated at 57.5% of dry matter against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food, which leaves the plant side carrying a good deal of the load.

Fibre is the other thing this recipe leans on. Crude fibre is declared at 6.5%, which converts to 6.9% of dry matter, and dried beet pulp at 5% is doing most of that work. Beet pulp is the fibrous material left behind once the sugar has been taken out of sugar beet. It supplies both the soluble and the insoluble kind, and that tends to steady an older dog's digestion. Fibre at this level also fills a dog up on fewer calories, useful once a dog is not burning it off the way they did.

The small print is short and sensible. Dried seaweed at 0.1% is there for its iodine and trace minerals, and lucerne adds a little plant fibre and protein. Yucca schidigera has been used in dog food for years to soften the smell of what the dog leaves behind. Fish oil at 0.5% is the omega source, drawn from the same family as the headline meat rather than bolted on from elsewhere.

One entry deserves a straight word. Between the beet pulp and the pea protein sits chicken fat. White fish may be the one meat in the recipe, but chicken has not been kept out of the bag altogether. Almost every dog will be untroubled by it, and chicken fat is an ordinary, palatable energy source. It matters only when an elimination plan has to keep chicken out completely. Pea protein sits in the same stretch of the list, and what it adds to the protein figure is plant material, not more fish.

£2.75 a kilo, sold in a single 12kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 251 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £0.69 a day. The label's own table asks 150 to 240 grams for a dog between 10kg and 20kg. If the two figures disagree, your dog's waistline settles it.