Natural & Delicious N&D Quinoa Medium & Maxi: Senior Lamb, Green Apple & Coconut review

Our Good band holds all five recipes, and the average adult dry food shares it with them. They get there by naming their animals, printing their percentages and keeping the additive panel generous. They also hold each other close enough that the band is the same across a range with very different targets. Underneath that shared band the recipes are not interchangeable. Declared protein runs from 22.0% of dry matter on the urinary recipe up to 30.8% on the weight management lamb, and energy from 314 to 396 kcal per 100g. Choose on the job you want the food to do, not on where the band sits.

Ingredients, as declared: lamb (20%), dehydrated lamb protein (18%), pea starch, chicken fat, pea fibre, quinoa seed extracted (8%), dried eggs, linseed, dehydrated herring protein, fish oil (from herring), dried green apple (2.5%), dried coconut (2.5%), carob pods, alfalfa meal, inulin (0.6%), fructo-oligosaccharides (0.6%), yeast extract (source of manno-oligo-saccharides) (0.6%), psyllium husks and seeds, potassium chloride, calcium sulphate dihydrate, dried brewers' yeast, aloe vera extract, glucosamine, chondroitin sulphate.

Every recipe here opens with a named animal in fresh form and then again as a dehydrated protein, which is the pattern worth looking for. Cooking removes the bulk of the water fresh meat carries. The dehydrated entry is what actually gets the protein into the kibble. The declared totals differ by recipe, from 18% and 18% on the duck to 20% and 20% on the venison and the weight management lamb.

Quinoa seed at 8% is the range's signature. Quinoa is a pseudo-cereal. The plant it comes from is a relative of spinach and no member of the grass family, so these recipes stay free of true grain. The seed supplies carbohydrate and a genuinely useful protein content for a plant. It sits alongside pea starch, which is the refined starch fraction of the pea and does most of the binding work, and pea fibre in the recipes that use it.

Herring is the marine element throughout, as dehydrated herring protein and as herring oil. That gives omega 3 in the ready-formed version a dog uses directly, with no conversion needed. Four of the five recipes take their added fat from chicken. Only the venison is built on fish oil, so poultry runs through most of the range whatever the animal on the front says.

The plants change with the purpose. The digestion recipe takes fennel, mint and artichoke at 2.0% each. The senior has green apple and coconut at 2.5% each, and the skin and coat has coconut and turmeric at the same level. Cranberry at 2.5% marks the urinary, and the weight management lamb gets broccoli and asparagus at 2.5% each. Inulin and fructo-oligosaccharides look after the gut across the board, with psyllium husks and yeast-derived mannan-oligosaccharides alongside them. Aloe vera extract appears everywhere.

The additive panels are declared to the milligram and chelated where it counts. Most of the range carries zinc at 163.8 mg, manganese at 64.6 mg, iron at 58.3 mg and copper at 15.8 mg per kilo, all in chelated form. Selenium comes from selenised yeast and taurine sits at 1000 mg. The senior recipe goes further with taurine at 2000 mg, L-tryptophan at 2000 mg, L-lysine at 2000 mg and L-carnitine at 650 mg, while the urinary lifts vitamin C to 300 mg. Glucosamine and chondroitin close every ingredients list with no printed dose. Read them as a standing nudge for joint comfort, not a measured supplement.

The one recipe here written for older dogs, with lamb at 20% and dehydrated lamb protein at 18%, plus dried green apple and coconut at 2.5% each and carob pods behind them. Fibre is much higher at 6.5% and energy lower at 356 kcal per 100g, which suits a dog that has slowed down. It also carries the richest amino acid panel of the five, with taurine and L-tryptophan both at 2000 mg and L-carnitine at 650 mg per kilo. This is the only bag in the range sold in 1.5kg.

Bag sizes vary by recipe. The digestion lamb, the skin and coat venison and the weight management lamb come in 2.5kg and 7kg, the urinary in 2kg and 7kg, and the senior lamb in 1.5kg and 5kg.

As a guide to how far a bag goes, take a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition on around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That dog would eat about 212 grams a day of the urinary recipe at one end. At the other it would be 268 grams of the weight management lamb, with the rest of the range in between. A leaner recipe means a bigger scoop.