Nature's Protection Sensitive Skin & Stomach Small Breed review

Our scoring puts this in the Good band. The typical adult dry food finishes in our Good band as well, so this one holds its own on the shelf it stands on. The form of the meat is a large part of why. Lamb at 38% is declared dry and finely ground. It goes into the mixer at roughly the weight it comes out at, where a fresh meat percentage would lose most of its water to the oven. Carbohydrate estimated at 39.4% of dry matter also sits under the 46.2% an adult dry food usually runs at. Transparency reads Excellent on the pillars and nutritional balance Good. Protein and processing reads Average, kept there by a protein level that is decent enough without being notable.

Ingredients, as declared: 38% lamb meat (dry and finely ground), rice, barley, bird fat, potato protein, sugar beet pulp, peas, flaxseed, beer yeast, coconut oil (1%), dynamic microns dynamic clinophylite (1%), Achicoria extract, Manano-oligosaccharides (MOS), cassava extract, yeasts (beta-glucans), dry calendula.

Lamb at 38% heads the list, and the label is specific about its form. Dry and finely ground means the weighing happens once the water is out. The headline is a fairer guide to what reaches the finished kibble than a fresh figure would be. The analysis follows through, with protein at 30.8% of dry matter and fat at 17.6%.

Rice and barley carry the starch. Both cook down into a carbohydrate most dogs handle easily, and barley brings useful fibre and micronutrients with it, though it does carry gluten, which a gluten-free household will want to have straight. Carbohydrate is estimated at 39.4% of dry matter, comfortably under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food.

Potato protein sits just behind the fat. It comes out of potato processing, and its job in the recipe is to lift the protein figure. For a dog, plant protein does not match meat protein, so read the 28% on the panel as being part plant in origin. The lamb is still doing the bulk of the work.

The digestive side that the name promises is genuinely present. Beet pulp supplies both soluble and insoluble fibre and chicory extract brings inulin. MOS comes from yeast cell walls, with the beta-glucan yeasts alongside it. They all work on the bacteria of the large intestine, and none of them acts on the gut wall directly. Fibre itself is modest at 2.3% of dry matter, so read this as prebiotic support rather than a bulking recipe.

For skin, flaxseed leads and coconut oil follows at 1%. The omega 3 in flaxseed comes in its plant form. A dog converts that to the skin-active version more slowly than it takes them ready made from fish, so give a coat several weeks to answer, not several days. Zinc sulphate at 115 mg and vitamin E at 530 mg back it up, and of all the trace minerals zinc is the one skin leans on hardest.

The tail is short and sensible. Clinoptilolite at 1% is a natural mineral clay used as a binder, dried calendula is in for lutein, and cassava extract holds the biscuit together. L-carnitine is dosed at 50 mg, an amino acid that helps turn fat into usable energy. Selenium arrives as sodium selenite. Of the two forms pet food may use, it is the commoner and the less readily absorbed. None of it changes the shape of the recipe, which stands on its lamb.

£7.00 a kilo, sold in a 1.5kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 234 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £1.63 a day. Fifteen kilos is our standard comparison dog, not a small breed one, so scale down for the dog actually in front of you. The energy figure behind the sum is estimated rather than declared.