Optimum Pet Health Senior Small-Medium Breeds review

Our Good band holds this one comfortably, which is also where the typical adult dry food finishes. What earns it comes from the label rather than from anything exotic. Fresh and dried meat are declared separately, the trace minerals are dosed in two forms apiece, and the prebiotic fibres are itemised instead of gathered under a catch-all. Nutritional balance still reads Average, held there by the potato and pea sitting behind the chicken.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (Of Which Fresh Chicken Meat 25% And Dried Chicken 16%) (41%), Dried Potato Flakes, Dried Sweet Potatoes, Green Peas, Chicken Fat (6%), Chicken Gravy (3%), Dried Beet Pulp, Dried Antarctic Krill (1%), Minerals, Fish Oil (1%), Linseed (1%), Dried Brewers Yeast, Dried Chicory (A Natural Source Of Fos And Insulin) (1%), Yeast Cell Wall (A Natural Source Of Mos And Beta Glucans) (1%), Gos (Galacto Oligosaccharides) (1%), Dried Curcuma Longa, Ascophyllum Nodosum, Glucosamine Hydrochloride, Chondroitin Sulphate, Msm (Methylsulfonylmethane), Yucca Schidigera, Dried Melissa Officinalis, Dried Thymus Vulgaris, Dried Fenugreek, Olive Powder, Dried Rosehip, Lactobacillus Helveticus

Chicken is declared at 41%, split as 25% fresh meat and 16% dried, with chicken gravy at 3% further down. Fresh meat is water for the most part, and cooking sends it up the chimney. Protein gets into the kibble through the dried share. Protein finishes at 28.6% of dry matter, a sensible level for a dog that no longer needs to fuel long days.

Added fat is chicken fat at 6% and nothing else, taking the total to 14.0%, with energy estimated at 350 kcal per 100g and not declared on the label. That combination is the point of a senior recipe: enough fat to keep the coat and the appetite going, not so much that a slower dog puts on weight quietly over a winter.

There is no cereal in the bag. The starch is dried potato flakes, then dried sweet potatoes, then green peas. Carbohydrate is estimated at 43.9% of dry matter, a little below the 46.2% typical of adult dry food, with dried beet pulp adding fermentable fibre behind it.

The joint entries are glucosamine hydrochloride, chondroitin sulphate and MSM, sitting together near the foot of the list with turmeric for company. None of them carries a printed dose, and their position tells you the amounts are small. Treat them as a helpful background, not as a reason to stop anything else you have been advised to give.

Dried Antarctic krill at 1% brings the marine omega 3s that older joints and coats appreciate, with fish oil at 1% doing the same. The plant form comes from linseed at 1%, and Ascophyllum nodosum, a brown seaweed, supplies iodine and trace minerals. The list names chicken and no other meat. That keeps the recipe simple to reason about, though those marine entries mean fish is present.

The gut plan is unusually well written out for a kibble of this kind. Dried chicory at 1% is there for FOS and inulin. Yeast cell wall at 1% delivers MOS and beta glucans. Galacto-oligosaccharides take a 1% line of their own, and a Lactobacillus culture closes the ingredients. Lemon balm, thyme, turmeric, yucca, rosehip, fenugreek and olive powder finish the label at trace level.

Every added trace mineral is declared twice, in a sulphate and in an amino acid chelate. Both halves carry a dose: zinc at 20 plus 30 mg, iron at 15 plus 30 mg and manganese at 30 plus 10 mg. Copper is at 10 plus 3 mg and iodine at 1.5 mg per kilo. Selenium from selenised yeast is dosed at 0.1 mg. Taurine is dosed as well, and vitamin E arrives at 450 mg with vitamin C at 100 mg.

£3.20 a kilo. Two bag sizes are listed, 2kg and 15kg.

As a guide, a 15kg dog in moderate condition would work through around 240 grams a day, reckoned from about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £0.77 a day. An older dog taking things easy will often need rather less than the maintenance figure, so the waistline gets the final word.