Opti Life Senior: Mini review

Both bags land in our Good band, level with the middle of the market where most adult dry food sits. Nothing dramatic gets them there. The meat is declared dried so the protein reads honestly, the vitamin and mineral panel is dosed in print, and the senior touches are real rather than decorative.

Ingredients, as declared: chicken (dehydrated, 31%), rice (31%), rice flour, vegetable fibres (cellulose 4.5%, beet pulp 1%), linseed, animal fat, hydrolysed animal proteins, minerals, salmon oil, brewer's yeast, dried whole eggs, FOS (0.1%), MOS (0.1%), sea algae (Ascophyllum nodosum), glucosamine 500 mg/kg, turmeric, rosemary (18 mg/kg), green tea (12 mg/kg).

Dehydrated chicken heads both recipes, at 27% in the Medium & Maxi and 31% in the Mini, and the word dehydrated is the important one. Fresh meat sheds most of its weight during cooking, so a label that leads on a dried meat is telling you what actually survives into the kibble. Protein converts to 26.1% of dry matter in the larger kibble and 29.9% in the smaller one.

Rice matches the chicken share exactly, at 27% and 31% respectively, with rice flour behind it. Rice is a gentle, well tolerated starch for an older gut, and it keeps this food outside the grain-free camp. For most senior dogs that is no bad thing at all.

The fibre is listed as vegetable fibres, which turns out to be cellulose at 5.5% in the Medium & Maxi and 4.5% in the Mini, with a little beet pulp behind. Cellulose is a plain bulking fibre that passes through largely untouched, and that is exactly why senior and light recipes reach for it: it fills the bowl without filling the dog. For the bacteria living in the gut, beet pulp is the better of the pair, and FOS and MOS at 0.1% each feed them as well.

The senior thinking sits in the closing entries. Glucosamine is declared at 500 mg/kg for the joints and taurine at 1100 mg for the heart. The antioxidant vitamins are dosed well up, with vitamin E at 500 mg and vitamin C at 200 mg in the Medium & Maxi and 600 mg and 240 mg in the Mini. Sea algae, green tea and turmeric round that side off.

Two entries stay vague. Animal fat and hydrolysed animal proteins carry no species name. The hydrolysed proteins are in there for flavour, and flavour counts for more as an older dog's appetite starts to wander. Salmon oil is named and welcome, bringing the marine omega 3s that linseed on its own cannot, though it does mean fish is in the bag.

The small-breed kibble, and the meatier of the pair on paper: dehydrated chicken at 31%, protein at 27.5% as fed, fat at 11.0% and energy at 380 kcal per 100g. Its feeding table stops at 10kg, which tells you plainly who it was drawn for.

The Medium & Maxi is sold as a single large sack. The Mini comes in two bags, the larger of them 7.5kg.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works through roughly 224 grams of the Medium & Maxi a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own table asks 140 to 155 grams for a dog between 12kg and 15kg, so weigh the bowl against the waistline rather than trusting either figure on its own.