More Large Breed Senior review

This recipe settles in our Good band, alongside the broad middle of the adult dry shelf. The reason is plain on the label: chicken meal at 13% is a light concentrated meat share, potato protein tops up the protein from the plant side, and carbohydrate comes to 46.1% of dry matter. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Average, with transparency Outstanding and value Good, so nothing is dragging it down in particular. What the label does put its effort into is the thing an older big dog most wants, and the joint dosing here is as generous as anything in the range.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh Chicken (20.5%), Rice, Chicken Meal (13%), Whole Maize, Oats, Beet Pulp, Potato Protein, Chicken Fat, Salmon Oil (2%), Chicken Digest, Brewers Yeast, Dried Egg, Minerals, Linseed, Glucosamine (1500mg/kg), Chondroitin Sulphate (1500mg/kg), MSM (1500mg/kg), L-Carnitine (1200mg/kg), MOS (1000mg/kg), FOS (1000mg/kg), Rosemary Extract (150mg/kg), Yucca Extract (100mg/kg), Marigold Meal (50mg/kg), Citrus Extract (50mg/kg)

Fresh chicken at 20.5% opens the list, rice follows, and chicken meal comes in at 13%. Meal is the dried chicken that carries through the oven largely intact, so 13% is the figure to hold on to. The concentrated meat is lighter than a quick glance suggests. Protein settles at 27.2% of dry matter, enough for a senior that is maintaining muscle rather than building it.

Rice leads the plant side, with whole maize and oats behind it, and the carbohydrate estimate lands at 46.1% of dry matter. Beet pulp is the fibre entry, bringing crude fibre to 3.8% of dry matter and doing most of the work on what you pick up on the walk.

Potato protein is the entry a careful eye will catch. Potato processing is where it comes from, and lifting the protein total is what it does. Meat protein still beats it on quality and on how well a dog absorbs it. Here it sits below the beet pulp, well down from the meats, so it is topping up and not standing in. It is fair to know it is there.

The joint dosing is the reason to pick up this particular bag. Glucosamine, chondroitin sulphate and MSM each carry a printed 1500 mg/kg, a proper helping for a big frame with years on it. L-carnitine at 1200 mg/kg keeps fat moving into energy and off the ribs.

Fat is deliberately modest at 14.7% of dry matter and the food runs at 369 kcal per 100 grams. An older dog's walks get shorter while the enthusiasm at dinner time does not, and both figures are set for that. Salmon oil at 2% and linseed cover the omega 3s between them.

One thing to know about the small print: the trace minerals are declared as whole compounds, not as the metals themselves. That is why a figure such as manganese sulphate monohydrate at 131.32 mg reads higher than the equivalent entry on a label that lists manganese on its own.

£5.50 a kilo, in 3kg and 12kg bags.

Every food on the site is worked out against the same reference dog, a 15kg adult in moderate condition. That lands here at roughly 228 grams a day on an estimate of around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), or £1.25 a day. Your own dog will be a good deal bigger than that: the label asks 325 to 370 grams for a dog of 25kg to 30kg, and rises from there.