Lifestage Senior Dry Food review

This one settles in our Good band, and the average adult dry food comes out there too. What lifts it is consistency rather than one headline: a single named animal all the way down, a mineral panel declared item by item, and an analysis that lines up with what the ingredients promise. Its transparency pillar reads Outstanding while protein and processing reads Average, a spread that says more together than either would on its own. The recipe is not trying to be a high-meat food, and it does not need to be to earn the placing.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey (26%), Turkey Meal (17%), Freshly Prepared Turkey (5%), Turkey Fat (2%), Turkey Gravy (2%), Brown Rice (21%), White Rice (21%), Oats (20%), Beet Pulp (5%), Linseed (3%), Alfalfa, Minerals, Seaweed, Omega 3 Supplement, Fructooligosaccharides (Fos), Chicory Extract, Yucca Extract, Dandelions, Glucosamine, Methylsulfonylmethane, Chondroitin Sulphate

Turkey supplies every animal entry here, arriving as turkey, turkey meal at 17%, freshly prepared turkey at 5%, turkey fat at 2% and turkey gravy at 2%. The meal carries most of the weight, because it goes into the mix already dried. The fresh forms lose most of theirs in the oven. Turkey is also the leaner of the common birds, and that is one reason recipes for older dogs lean on it so often. Protein converts to 22.8% of dry matter and fat to 8.7%, which is a gentle pairing for a dog taking life at a slower pace now.

The starch is split three ways: oats take 20%, and brown rice and white rice take 21% each. Cooked rice is among the easiest carbohydrates for a dog to handle. Oats bring fibre, and with it manganese and magnesium plus a spread of B vitamins. Carbohydrate is estimated at 57.6% of dry matter against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food, which puts a fair share of the work on the grain. One honest caveat about this label: the printed percentages add up to more than a whole recipe, so take each one as the maker's indication and not as a figure you can total.

The gut gets proper attention. Beet pulp at 5% supplies both kinds of fibre. Chicory extract and fructooligosaccharides go to work further down, on the bacteria of the large bowel, which is the quiet sort of support an ageing digestion appreciates. Yucca extract has a long reputation for softening stool odour. Linseed at 3% brings plant omega 3s with a useful helping of fibre. An omega 3 supplement follows it without naming where it came from, so a household keeping their dog off fish will want to ask.

Glucosamine, methylsulfonylmethane and chondroitin sulphate all turn up near the bottom of the list. That is the set you would hope for on a food written for older dogs. How much of each goes in is not printed, so their presence reads as an intention and not a measurement. Everything past the minerals sits at trace level in any case, and it is the turkey and the fibre that carry this recipe.

The mineral panel is fully dosed, with zinc at 100 mg, iron at 50 mg, manganese at 20 mg, copper at 15 mg, iodine at 2 mg and selenium at 0.1 mg per kilo. The zinc comes as an oxide instead of a chelate. A dog's gut takes that form up less readily than the chelated versions some labels use, so the dose has to work harder here. Alfalfa, seaweed and dandelion round the list off, seaweed in particular being a natural source of iodine and a spread of trace minerals.

The 2kg and 12kg bags both work out at £2.75 a kilo.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition takes roughly 257 grams a day on an assumption of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £0.71 a day. The label asks 155 to 260 grams for a dog of that weight, and if the two figures differ, trust the waistline.