Morrisons Chief Dry Adult: With Beef & Veg (3kg) review

Our scoring leaves this one in Poor, well below the Good band that the middle of the dry-food shelf reaches, and the reason sits as much in the analysis as in the naming. Cereals, meat and animal derivatives, oils and fats and derivatives of vegetable origin cover nearly the whole recipe between them, and not one of the four says what it actually is. Protein is modest at 21.2% of dry matter and carbohydrate is high, which pulls nutritional balance down alongside protein and processing, and both of those read Poor with transparency Average. The food does meet the complete standard, with every vitamin and trace element dosed in print. A settled adult dog can eat it week in, week out without any drama at all.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, Meat and animal derivatives (22%, including 4% Beef), Oils and fats, Minerals, Vegetables (0.5% Dried peas, equivalent to 4% peas), Derivatives of vegetable origin

Cereals opens the list, which tells you that grain is doing the heavy lifting without telling you which grain it is. The term covers everything from sound whole cereals to the by-products of milling, and it lets the mix move with whatever is available in a given month. Plenty of dogs eat that quite happily; the limitation is that nobody outside the factory can check it.

Meat and animal derivatives at 22% is the meat side, and 4% of the food is pinned to beef. Most dogs enjoy beef, and it is digestible and palatable, but the declaration only accounts for a small slice of what is in the bag. The rest sits under a legal heading that spans the fleshy parts and processing products of any warm-blooded land animal. Quality could be anywhere on a wide range, and the label will not say.

The vegetable content is a small piece of honesty in among the general terms: 0.5% dried peas, which the label helpfully translates as the equivalent of 4% peas before drying. Derivatives of vegetable origin behind it is another catch-all, this time for whatever is left after vegetables, legumes, cereals and oil seed have been processed.

No moisture figure is declared, so the dry matter conversions here work off the 8% that a dry food normally carries. On that basis fat lands at 8.7% of dry matter, which is genuinely lean, and estimated carbohydrate at 57.6%. Calcium works out at 2.28% of dry matter and ash at 8.7%, both on the full side, which is the usual shape for a cereal-based recipe carrying a heavy mineral supplement. Energy is our estimate at 322 kcal per 100g, the label declaring none.

The additive block is the most specific part of the whole panel. Vitamins A and D3 both carry a stated dose per kilo, and vitamin E is set at 70mg. Then come zinc at 100mg, iron at 60mg, manganese at 50mg, copper at 8mg, iodine at 2.5mg and selenium at 0.1mg. The forms are oxides and sulphates, not chelates, so absorption is a shade less ready, though that is perfectly standard. Each carries a printed number.

£1.20 a kilo, in a 3kg bag.

Taking the standard maintenance estimate of 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75), that works out at roughly 261 grams and £0.31 a day. The label's own table asks 180 to 410 grams for a dog between 10kg and 30kg, and the dog's shape is the tiebreaker.