Nature's Variety Healthy Grains Adult Medium / Maxi: Chicken review

All three varieties settle in our Good band, and that is exactly where an average adult dry food ends up. Read this as a solid mainstream kibble. The arithmetic is easy to follow. Deboned meat at 16% is a fresh weight and shrinks in the oven, so the dried protein concentrate behind it does more of the real work. Grains and peas take up a good share of the rest. Where the label does well is openness, and transparency reads Outstanding across all three, with percentages printed almost the whole way down the list. Carbohydrate is the pleasant surprise, estimated at 40.7% of dry matter on an assumed 8% moisture, under the 46.2% typical of an adult dry food.

Ingredients, as declared: Deboned chicken meat* (16%), dried chicken protein (15%), dried peas* (15%), oats* (13%), brown rice* (7%), maize protein, whole barley*, poultry fat* (6%), hydrolysed animal proteins (poultry, pork, fish) (4%), beet pulp*, minerals, dried carrot* (0.5% equivalent to 4% of fresh carrot), dried apple* (0.3% equivalent to 2% fresh apple), dried seaweed (kelp)* (0.01%), dried rosemary* (0.01%). *Natural ingredients

A deboned meat at 16% opens every label. Deboned is the clue: it is a fresh weight, and fresh meat loses much of its bulk to the oven. The entry behind it does the heavier lifting, dried chicken protein at 15% in the two bird recipes and dried tuna protein at 10% in the white fish. Protein finishes at 30.4% of dry matter across the range.

The grains are the point of the name and they are named individually. Fibre and a spread of micronutrients come from the oats. Brown rice is easily handled once cooked, and whole barley keeps more of its goodness than a refined form would, though it carries gluten with it. Dried peas at 15% sit alongside them, and maize protein appears in every recipe as a protein topper, not a whole grain.

Hydrolysed animal proteins at 4% are the palatability entry, broken into smaller fragments so that they taste stronger to a dog. The label is honest that they come from poultry, pork and fish, which is more than many makers print. No recipe here works as a single protein diet for the same reason.

Beet pulp handles the fibre, which comes out at 3.3% of dry matter on the analysis. The tail is unusually well declared: dried carrot at 0.5%, dried apple at 0.3%, dried kelp and dried rosemary at 0.01% each. Both of those last two have a job. Kelp is the iodine source, and rosemary works as an antioxidant to hold off fats turning. At a hundredth of a percent, though, nobody should expect them to move the nutrition.

The minerals are dosed in print and supplied as sulphates rather than chelates, with zinc the biggest of them at 370 mg of zinc sulphate monohydrate delivering 135 mg of zinc. The selenium source is sodium selenite. Of the two forms Europe allows, it is the commoner one. Moisture goes undeclared on all three labels, so the dry matter readings here rest on an assumed 8%.

Deboned chicken at 16% with dried chicken protein at 15% behind it, oats at 13% and brown rice at 7%. Maize protein sits ahead of the barley in this one. For a dog with no poultry trouble in their history, this is the easiest of the three to start on.

£8.00 a kilo, sold in 3kg, 10kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 230 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which comes to £1.84 a day. That sum works from an estimated energy figure, not a declared one. For a 20kg dog the label's own table asks 235 grams, and 320 grams for a 30kg one. Any difference between the two is best settled by the waistline.