Lily's Kitchen Breakfast Crunch review

Average is the band this one lands in, one rung below where most adult dry food sits. The running order is what keeps it there. Oat flour ahead of the chicken makes cereal the largest single component, and potato protein sitting high up carries some of the protein load that a bird would otherwise carry. Transparency reads Outstanding, helped by percentages printed against most of the small entries, while protein and processing reads Average and nutritional balance Poor. It is still a decent breakfast, and a dog who likes a lighter morning bowl gets exactly what this food was built for.

Ingredients, as declared: Oat Flour (27.5%), Chicken (26%), Rice Flour, Potato Protein, Hydrolysed Chicken Protein, Turkey (4%), Minerals, Poultry Fat, Oats (2.5%), Apple Puree (0.5%), Sunflower Seeds (0.5%), Whey Powder, Flaxseed, Dried Yeasts, Salmon Oil, Yogurt Powder (0.1%), Banana (0.1%), Dried Cranberries (0.1%), Skimmed Milk Powder, Alfalfa, Chickweed, Cleavers, Golden Rod, Nettles, Seaweed, Dandelion Root, Celery Seeds, Milk Thistle, Burdock Root, Marigold Flowers, Rosehips.

Oat flour at 27.5% takes the top slot, just ahead of chicken at 26%, and that order tells you what sort of food this is. Oats are one of the gentler cereals a dog can eat. Once cooked they digest easily and bring fibre with manganese and a few B vitamins. Milling them to flour is what gives the kibble its light, crunchy bite. Whole oats reappear further down at 2.5%. Protein converts to 22.8% of dry matter and fat to 12.2%, a moderate protein sitting on a fairly generous fat.

The animal side is chicken at 26% with turkey at 4% behind it, supported by hydrolysed chicken protein and poultry fat. Hydrolysed chicken protein is meat broken into smaller fragments, and it is here as a palatant, not as a protein source. It earns its place: few things make a dry food smell as interesting to a dog who picks at breakfast. Potato protein sits high on the list too, a plant concentrate that props up the protein figure without being a match for meat protein in quality or digestibility.

The one genuinely vague entry on this list is the poultry fat. Chicken, turkey, duck, goose: any of them could be in it, and the label names none of them, so a household ruling a particular bird in or out will not find the answer here. For most dogs it is simply a good source of energy and a large part of why the food tastes as good as it does.

The breakfast character comes from a dairy and fruit tail: whey powder, yogurt powder at 0.1%, skimmed milk powder, apple puree at 0.5%, banana at 0.1% and dried cranberries at 0.1%. These are small entries, seasoning more than substance, though cranberries carry a long-standing reputation for helping keep a urinary tract in order. Sunflower seeds at 0.5% and flaxseed add plant omega oils, with salmon oil supplying the marine kind.

The long hedgerow list, from alfalfa and chickweed down to burdock root and rosehips, is the house signature and everything on it sits at trace level. Calcium works out at 1.2% of dry matter, a comfortable adult figure, and crude fibre is modest at 2.0%, so this is a low-residue bowl by design rather than by accident.

£14.81 a kilo, sold in an 800g bag.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would get through about 227 grams a day, on an estimate of around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That puts the day rate at £3.36. Let the dog set the portion, not the scoop, particularly if this is one bowl of two.