Morrisons Premium Natural Dry Adult: Chicken review

Both recipes come out in our Good band, alongside the middle of the adult dry shelf, and little separates the two. Plain honesty earns most of that. Meat is named to the species with its dried and fresh shares given separately, there is no grain and no anonymous fat, and the whole list can be read in one go. Protein and processing reads Average, and so does nutritional balance, because 30% named meat is a moderate share and carbohydrate sits close to what a dry food typically carries, while transparency reads Outstanding. A clearly written label doing solid rather than spectacular nutrition is exactly the shape of a Good band food.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (30%) (Chicken Meal 22%, Freshly Prepared Chicken* 8%), Sweet Potato* (30%), Potato*, Dried Peas*, Chicken Fat*, Beet Pulp*, Whole Linseed* (2%), Chicken Gravy, Minerals, Yeast Products (0.2%, as a Source of Prebiotic MOS), Dried Blueberry*, Dried Cranberry*, Marigold Meal*, Turmeric*, Dried Spearmint, *Natural Ingredients

Both recipes declare 30% of the named meat, and both split that figure into its parts. The split is what makes it readable. The chicken puts 22% into chicken meal and 8% into freshly prepared chicken; the lamb reverses the weighting with 18% lamb meal and 12% freshly prepared lamb. Because the water is already out of meal, the chicken recipe holds more of its headline into the finished kibble than the lamb does. Protein converts to 25.5% of dry matter for the chicken, 25.0% for the lamb.

The grain-free base is sweet potato at 30%, with potato after it, and dried peas and beet pulp complete the plant side. The substitution is a straightforward one and it works. Estimated carbohydrate comes out at 48.9% of dry matter in the chicken, 46.7% in the lamb, against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food. That puts the starch share where a kibble normally sits.

The fat in both recipes is chicken fat, and both carry chicken gravy. In the chicken recipe that is a virtue, because it keeps the whole animal side to one species and gives an owner with a poultry-friendly dog a genuinely single-animal food. In the lamb it means the recipe is a change of main meat and not a way round chicken. That is the one thing to be clear about before buying it for a suspected chicken problem.

The omega in both comes from whole linseed at 2%, and it is omega 3 in its plant form. Turning that into the active forms takes a dog longer than lifting them straight from fish. Give a coat weeks to answer, not days. Yeast products at 0.2% bring prebiotic MOS, which suits the flora of the large intestine. Blueberry, cranberry, marigold meal, turmeric and spearmint close the list as a flourish. The recipe stands perfectly well without them.

The additive panel is complete and dosed. Vitamins A and D3 have their international unit figures printed, with vitamin E at 70mg per kilo. The trace minerals run zinc at 100mg, iron at 60mg, manganese at 50mg, copper at 8mg, iodine at 2.5mg and selenium at 0.1mg. Natural tocopherol extracts do the preserving. Neither label declares moisture, so the dry matter figures throughout assume the 8% a dry food normally carries, and the energy figures are our estimates. The chicken gives calcium at 1.52% of dry matter, the lamb 2.17%.

Chicken at 30%, and the dried form carries most of it, 22% chicken meal to 8% freshly prepared. It is the cleaner of the two for single-animal feeding, since the fat and the gravy are chicken as well, so nothing else with a face appears anywhere on the list. It also runs the leaner mineral profile of the pair, with ash at 7.6% and calcium at 1.52% of dry matter, and the higher protein at 25.5%.

£2.64 a kilo for either recipe, sold in 1.8kg bags.

Assume 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The chicken works out at about 237 grams a day and the lamb at 240. Either way that is £0.63 a day. The labels themselves ask 165 to 375 grams for a dog between 10kg and 30kg. Where the two guides differ, go by the shape of the dog.