Morrisons Chief Dry Worker Breed review

This finishes in our Poor band and the typical adult dry food in Good. The distance between them is almost all about what the label withholds. Cereals, meat and animal derivatives, oils and fats and derivatives of vegetable origin make up virtually the entire recipe, and none of them names an actual ingredient. Protein is modest and estimated carbohydrate is high, so protein and processing, nutritional balance and transparency all read Poor. That is a verdict on the panel, not on the dinner. This is still a complete food with a full set of dosed vitamins and trace elements. The extra fat means a dog burning energy outdoors gets more out of each bowl than the rest of the line would give it.

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

Grain is the backbone here, with cereals heading the list, and the term names none of the grains it might be drawing on. It is a heading broad enough to hold anything from sound whole cereals to milling by-products, and broad enough that the mix can change between production runs. That is the honest limitation of the label, not a claim about what is in this particular bag.

Meat and animal derivatives at 22% carries the animal side, with beef declared for 4% of the food. Beef is a palatable, digestible meat and a sensible headline for a working recipe. The remaining meat falls under a legal definition that takes in the fleshy parts and the processing products of warm-blooded land animals generally, which spans good material and plain material alike without saying which.

Fat is where this recipe separates itself. At 12.0% of dry matter it is the most energy-dense of the Chief dry foods, and for a dog putting in miles that matters more than almost anything else on the panel. The source is given only as oils and fats, so whether the energy is coming from animal or vegetable fat is not something the label answers.

Moisture is not declared, so the dry matter figures here assume the 8% a dry food normally holds. Worked that way, protein reads 21.7%, estimated carbohydrate 54.3% and ash 8.2%, with calcium at 2.17% of dry matter. Energy is our own estimate at 338 kcal per 100g. The vegetables amount to 0.5% dried peas, which the label converts for you to the equivalent of 4% peas before drying.

Numbers run all the way through the additive panel, and that is the one place on this label where they do. Vitamin A and vitamin D3 each carry an IU figure, with vitamin E at 70mg per kilo. Zinc comes at 100mg, iron at 60mg, manganese at 50mg, copper at 8mg, iodine at 2.5mg and selenium at 0.1mg. Oxides and sulphates do the job here in place of chelates, so the gut works a little harder to take them up. The doses are all there in print.

Sold in a single 12kg bag.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, on the standard maintenance estimate of 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75), would work through about 248 grams. A dog actually doing a day's work will need more than that. The label's table starts at 30 grams for the smallest dogs and climbs to 650 grams at 50kg, so feed to the dog you have.