Millies Wolfheart Agility Mix review

Our scoring settles this one high in the Good band, which is also where the typical adult dry food finishes. The lift comes from ordinary things done properly rather than from anything showy. A dried meat leads the list and every meat and fat entry names its animal. Carbohydrate lands at 44.6% of dry matter, a shade under the 46.2% typical for adult dry food, and every line of the mineral panel carries a figure.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried Pork (21%), Sweet Potato (21%), Potato, Freshly Prepared Pork (10%), Freshly Prepared Beef (10%), Tapioca, Chickpeas, Freshly Prepared Beef Tripe (4%), Pork Fat (4%), Pork Gravy (1%), Minerals, Tomato Pomace, Salmon Oil (1%), Joint Pack (Glucosamine 177.5 mg/kg, Methylsulfonylmethane 177.5 mg/kg, Chondroitin Sulphate 125 mg/kg), Mixed Herbs, Dried Apple, Burdock Root, Dried Camomile, Dried Carrot, Dried Cranberry, Dried Dandelion, Aniseed & Fenugreek, Dried Seaweed, Dried Peppermint, Yucca Extract

Dried pork at 21% opens the list, and that opening matters more than the wording suggests. Water is the bulk of what fresh meat weighs, and the oven sends it packing. A dried entry at the top brings protein that actually survives into the finished kibble. Freshly prepared pork and freshly prepared beef then add 10% each, with freshly prepared beef tripe at 4% behind them.

Pork is a rarity in the dog food aisle. For a dog that has ploughed through every poultry recipe going, that is a genuinely fresh start. Tripe earns its place too. Dogs digest it easily and very few of them walk away from it at dinner time.

Sweet potato takes 21% of the plant side, with potato, tapioca and chickpeas following and no grain anywhere. Of the four, tapioca brings the least, being starch and not much more. It sits below both potatoes on the list, and chickpeas bring more to the bowl than starch alone.

The joint supplements come with figures beside them, no vague promise on the front of the bag: glucosamine and methylsulfonylmethane at 177.5 mg/kg each, chondroitin sulphate at 125 mg/kg. Salmon oil at 1% supplies the omega 3, which does mean the recipe carries fish even though no fish is named among the meats.

Every added trace mineral carries a dose. Zinc and iron come in at 48 mg, manganese at 34 mg, copper at 14 mg, iodine at 0.96 mg and selenium at 0.29 mg per kilo. The selenium is sodium selenite, which is what most makers use. Calcium works out at 1.52% of dry matter, which is what allows this bag to carry a large breed through growth as well as feed an adult.

The long tail of herbs and dried fruits, from burdock root and camomile down through dandelion, peppermint and yucca extract, is decoration at trace level. The recipe is not leaning on any of it, and it does not need to.

£5.00 a kilo, sold in 700g, 4kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 234 grams a day, which works out at £1.17 a day. The arithmetic starts from around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The bag's own chart puts a dog of that weight at 175 to 265 grams. Where the two figures disagree, the waistline is the one to trust.