McAdams Sensitive Small Breed: Turkey review

This one finishes in the Good band, in the same company as most adult dry food, and it sits around the middle of that band. None of that is a mark against what the recipe sets out to do. A single named animal and a list you can genuinely check are worth having, and it delivers both without fuss. Weighing against them, the meat headline pools meat with fat and gravy, and tapioca is doing a filler's job behind the sweet potato. The starch share also runs a touch high for a dry food. Protein and processing comes back Good and transparency Outstanding, with nutritional balance the one reading at Poor, which reads as an honest label on a recipe of ordinary richness.

Ingredients, as declared: Whole British Free Range Turkey with Turkey Fat and Gravy (64.5%), Sweet Potato (25%), Tapioca (6.5%), Lentils, Minerals, Vegetable Fibres, Algae Oil, Prebiotics (FOS (0.15%), MOS (0.15%)), Yucca Extract, Dried Marigold, Hand Cut Irish Seaweed (0.03%), Dried Orange, New Zealand Green Lipped Mussel, Camomile, Carrots, Cranberries, Spinach, Tomatoes, Lavender, Dried Rosemary.

Everything about this recipe follows from one decision: use turkey and stop there. The declaration reads whole British free range turkey, its fat and its gravy, all at 64.5%. One figure covers the meat together with its rendered fat and its cooking liquor. Lean meat is only a share of it. More to the point for this dog, no second land animal appears anywhere below. Turkey is mild and digestible, and it is rarely the meat a dog has already reacted to, which is why elimination style recipes reach for it so often.

The plant side is short too. Sweet potato at 25% carries fibre and micronutrients as well as starch. Tapioca at 6.5% brings starch and little more. Lentils add protein and fibre, with B vitamins. Added up, they leave carbohydrate at 49.5% of dry matter, with protein converting to 22.8% and fat to 15.2%. That makes it a middling rich food, not a light one.

Choosing algae oil over fish oil is the smartest line on the label. It delivers the same long chain omega 3s without putting a fish in the recipe. When fish is one of the things you are trying to rule out, that is exactly what you want. Be aware that two marine items remain: hand cut Irish seaweed at 0.03%, included for iodine and its broad mineral content, and New Zealand green lipped mussel, which is a shellfish.

Gut support here is prebiotic and nothing more dramatic than that. FOS and MOS are declared at 0.15% each. Their target is the bacteria down in the large intestine, not the dog. Vegetable fibres keep the stool in good order. Yucca extract is there for odour, camomile for its traditional settling reputation, and the closing run of dried marigold, orange, carrots, cranberries, spinach, tomatoes, lavender and rosemary is trace level throughout.

Every added element carries a figure beside it: zinc and iron at 48 mg per kilo, manganese at 34 mg, copper at 5 mg, iodine at 0.96 mg and selenium at 0.19 mg. The preserving is done by mixed tocopherols, the natural vitamin E antioxidant, with no synthetic one used. Calcium does not appear on the analysis and neither does moisture, which is why the dry matter column here rests on an assumption.

£13.40 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 5kg bags.

Across dry foods our reference is a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition. That dog needs roughly 230 grams a day at around 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), or £3.08 a day. Closer to the size this bag is built for, the label asks 75 to 100 grams a day for a 5kg dog and 120 to 165 grams for a 10kg dog.