Mac's Complete Dry: With Beef & Veg review

Our scoring lands this in the Poor band, two bands under the Good reading the middle of the adult dry shelf earns. Nearly all of that gap is about naming. Cereals, oils and fats and derivatives of vegetable origin are all umbrella terms, and the animal side is tied to a species only for the named 4%. The starch share also runs well clear of what a dry food usually carries. What the band is not saying is that a dog doing well on this needs moving off it. This is a complete food with a properly dosed mineral panel behind it. The reading is really about a label that holds its cards close.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, Meat and Animal Derivatives (min 4% beef), Oils and Fats, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Vegetables (min 4% peas), Minerals, Yeasts (0.08%).

The list opens with cereals, a single word that covers every grain there is, from the finest to the least useful. Meat and animal derivatives works the same way: it is the legal catch-all for parts of warm blooded land animals that nobody has chosen to name. Neither term proves a food is poorly made, and some good recipes use broad wording to protect a formula, but neither lets you verify what is actually going in the bowl.

The named entries are the ones you can hold on to. A minimum of 4% beef in one bag and a minimum of 4% chicken in the other. On the plant side, a minimum of 4% peas does the same work. Beef and chicken are both highly digestible meats and whole peas bring fibre and useful micronutrients, so the parts that are named are decent parts. Everything around them, oils and fats and derivatives of vegetable origin included, is described by category. The maker is therefore free to change a source from one batch to the next.

The analysis reads exactly as that build suggests. Protein converts to 22.8% of dry matter and fat to 8.7%, both gentle by kibble standards. Carbohydrate is estimated at 56.0% of dry matter, and the typical adult dry food sits at 46.2%. Energy is an estimate, not a declared figure, and works out at roughly 322 kcal per 100 grams. That is on the low side, and part of why this suits a dog who gains weight on richer food.

The mineral side is more generous than the ingredient list would lead you to expect. Zinc turns up twice, as zinc oxide at 55 mg and as zinc chelate at 390 mg per kilo. A dog's gut generally absorbs the chelated form with less trouble. Manganese, copper, iodine and selenium are each dosed in print. Selenium comes as sodium selenite. Two forms are permitted in pet food and sodium selenite is the commoner of them, though the organic one is generally reported as easier for the body to take up.

Yeasts appear at 0.08%, a token amount rather than a working one. The label also declares an antioxidant and a preservative without naming either, which is common enough on a food built this way. Moisture is left off the analysis altogether. The dry matter figures here therefore use the 8% a kibble usually holds, and calcium is not declared.

The beef bag names beef at a minimum of 4% inside the meat entry. Beef is a strongly flavoured red meat with a reputation for being easy to digest and hard to refuse. Reach for this bag when your dog has gone off poultry.

£0.83 a kilo, sold in a 15kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 261 grams a day, which works out at £0.22. The figure rests on around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own table asks 200 to 400 grams for a dog between 10kg and 20kg. The waistline is the tiebreaker.