Morrisons Chief Adult Small Breed review

This finishes in our Poor band, two bands under the Good band of the typical adult dry food, and naming accounts for nearly all of the difference. Cereals, meat and animal derivatives, oils and fats and derivatives of vegetable origin are umbrella terms, and between them they account for nearly the whole recipe. A food that will not say what is inside it cannot be scored as though it had. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Poor on that evidence, while the dosed vitamin and mineral panel lifts transparency into our Good band. None of that means a small dog eats badly here. Protein sits at 24.2% of dry matter, the mineral panel is complete and properly dosed, and it is a complete food that plenty of small dogs get on with. It simply cannot show its working.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, Meat and Animal Derivatives (27%, including 4% Chicken), Oils and Fats, Minerals, Vegetables (0.5% Dried Peas, equivalent to 4% Peas), Derivatives of Vegetable Origin

Cereals is the first entry and the vaguest one on the label. The term stretches across every grain there is, from good whole cereals to the leftovers of milling. None of them is named, so the mix can change between batches. Most dogs will not notice one way or the other. For an owner trying to pin down a suspected wheat reaction, there is nothing on the panel to work with.

Meat and animal derivatives at 27% is the protein engine, with 4% of the food tied to chicken. In law the phrase covers the fleshy parts of slaughtered warm-blooded land animals along with the products of processing the carcass. That takes in genuinely good material and very ordinary material alike, and which end this bag draws from is not stated. Protein lands at 24.2% of dry matter, gentle for a dry food, and the estimated carbohydrate figure of 53.3% against 46.2% typical tells you where the rest of the bulk comes from.

The peas are worth reading twice. The label declares 0.5% dried peas and then explains that this is equivalent to 4% peas before drying. That is an honest piece of arithmetic, and a fair indication of how little pea is actually in the bag. Derivatives of vegetable origin, further down, is another catch-all covering anything left over from processing vegetables, legumes and oil seed.

Where the label does get specific is the additive block, and it is a complete one. Vitamins A, D3 and E are each dosed per kilo, with vitamin E at 70mg. Zinc follows at 100mg, iron at 60mg, manganese at 50mg, copper at 8mg, iodine at 2.5mg and selenium at 0.1mg. These come as oxides and sulphates, not chelates, and a dog's gut generally takes those up a shade less readily. The doses themselves are sound. Sodium selenite is the selenium form here, the commoner of the two allowed in pet food.

Calcium works out at 2.2% of dry matter with ash at 8.8%, both fuller than a meat-led kibble would show, which is the shape a mineral-supplemented, cereal-based recipe tends to take. For a healthy adult small dog that is ordinary feeding. The energy figure is our own estimate at 328 kcal per 100g, since the label declares none of its own.

£1.20 a kilo, sold in a 2.5kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult in moderate condition would eat about 256 grams a day at £0.31, on an assumed requirement of 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). This is a small breed recipe, though, and its own table stops at 175 grams for a 10kg dog, so most dogs actually eating it will get through rather less than that.