Morrisons Chief Semi-Moist Chunks: With Chicken review

Our Poor band is where this one lands, with protein and processing and nutritional balance both reading Poor underneath it and transparency Good. Semi-moist has no wider cohort behind it for us to line this up against, so the reading rests on the label itself. Broad category terms sit where other foods name names, cereal comes ahead of the animal fraction, and sugars are declared without a figure attached. None of that is a statement about how a dog gets on with it. This is a food plenty of dogs eat happily, holding their condition on it. The band describes what the packaging is willing to tell you, not what turns up in the bowl.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, Meat and Animal Derivatives (21.5%, Including 4% Chicken), Various Sugars, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.1% Chicory Extract, as a Source of Prebiotic FOS), Minerals, Oils and Fats

Semi-moist sits between a biscuit and a tray, and the declared 16% moisture is what puts it there. That is enough water to keep every chunk pliable and nowhere near enough to need a fridge, so the bag lives in the cupboard and the food portions out with a scoop. Energy works out at 292 kcal per 100g, which is an estimate rather than a figure this label prints.

The list opens with cereals and follows with meat and animal derivatives at 21.5%, two legal umbrellas that between them cover most of the bag. Umbrella wording lets a maker move between grains and between animals as supply shifts, which is why so little here carries a name of its own. Read it for what it is and do not assume the worst: the same wording covers good raw material and plain raw material alike. The pack cannot tell you which of them arrived this week.

Chicken is the one animal named, at 4%, and it earns its popularity in British dog food honestly: dogs like it and most digest it easily. The other side of that popularity is that chicken sensitivity turns up more often than sensitivity to any other meat. Knowing which meat is named matters if your dog has that history.

Various sugars earn their place in a food like this by holding moisture inside the piece and making it taste worth finishing. They bring readily available energy along too, which is the reason to weigh portions for a dog watching its waistline rather than to fill the bowl by eye.

Chicory extract appears at 0.1%, declared as a source of the prebiotic FOS. That is food for the bacteria at work in the large intestine. It is a small and deliberate inclusion, and one of the few entries on this label that says exactly what it is and why it is there.

The analysis is modest and entirely consistent with a cereal-led recipe. Protein converts to 21.4% of dry matter and fat to 8.3%, with the estimated carbohydrate at 57.8%, and crude fibre at 2.5% comes mostly from the grain. Calcium works out at 1.9% of dry matter, which sits comfortably for the adult dogs this food is listed for.

The added panel is the most exact part of the label, dosed with figures throughout. Zinc comes in at 100mg, iron at 60mg and manganese at 50mg, with copper at 8mg, iodine at 2.5mg and vitamin E at 70mg. Selenium arrives at 0.1mg, in the sodium selenite form. Of the two selenium forms pet food is allowed, that is the one most makers reach for.

£1.67 a kilo, from a single 2.7kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition gets through roughly 287 grams a day, which comes to around £0.48. That comes off a figure of 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own guide runs wider than that, feeding 200 to 450 grams a day across the 10kg to 30kg range.