Nutrivet Instinct Senior review

This one earns its Good band in the analysis, and the front of the bag has little to do with it. Protein reaches 42.4% of dry matter, and carbohydrate converts to 23.3% where the typical adult dry food runs at 46.2%. The ingredient list is still naming animals long after most senior recipes have moved on to cereal. That is enough for our Good band, level with the typical adult dry food. Print is what holds it down, and the substance is fine. No percentage sits beside any of the meats, no dose beside the joint pair and no calcium figure anywhere, so the list order has to be taken on trust.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken, lamb, turkey, potato, peas, chicken oil and fat, salmon, dried whole egg, dried chicken, dried lamb, protein from dried peas, salmon oil, beetroot pulp, green beans, sweet potato, tomato, apple, alfalfa, chicory root, yeast, fennel leaf, cranberry, blackcurrant jelly, dried plasma proteins, poultry hydrolysate potassium chloride, calcium carbonate, fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS), mannan-oligosaccharides (MOS), taurine, fucus vesiculosus (bladderwrack) extract, ascophyllum nodosum (clubweed) extract, yucca schidigera extract, chondroitin sulphate, N-acetyl-glucosamine, L-carnitine tartrate, rosemary extract, green tea extract.

Three meats open the label and a fourth follows close behind. Chicken, lamb and turkey are listed in the form that usually means fresh, so the oven drives off much of that weight as water. Further down, the dried chicken and dried lamb quietly carry much of the finished kibble's protein. The declared 39.0% protein says the plan works, though no percentage sits beside any single meat, which is the one thing a label reader would most like to see.

Potato, peas and sweet potato do the binding, with green beans and beetroot pulp behind them. Not a scrap of cereal appears on the list. Protein from dried peas is also in the recipe, a refined plant fraction and not a vegetable. It adds to the protein figure without adding any meat.

The senior thinking lives in the tail. The joint pair is chondroitin sulphate and N-acetyl-glucosamine. L-carnitine tartrate is the entry usually chosen to help an older body work with fat. Taurine looks after the heart, and FOS, MOS and chicory root are prebiotics for a gut that has grown less forgiving. Bladderwrack and clubweed bring the seaweed minerals, and yucca extract earns its keep on stool odour.

Palatability gets real attention, which matters when an old dog starts leaving food. Flavour is the job of the dried plasma proteins and the poultry hydrolysate. Every working entry names its species except the hydrolysate, which stops at a family. So duck and goose stay open questions.

The fruit and herb tail, running from tomato and apple through alfalfa, fennel leaf, cranberry and blackcurrant jelly, is seasoning rather than substance. Rosemary and green tea extracts close the list and are doing the preserving. The meat is where this food's weight sits, and that is where it belongs.

£6.15 a kilo, sold in 3kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 206 grams a day, taking around 840 kcal a day as the target (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £1.27 a day. The scoop is only a starting point. Your dog's waistline is the judge.