Pets at Home Complete Nutrition Dry Adult: Chicken with Vegetables review

The Poor band here is mostly a reading of what the label declines to say. Cereals, meat and animal derivatives, derivatives of vegetable origin, oils and fats: every one of those is an umbrella term. Any of them can cover something decent or something very ordinary, and not a word on the bag would change. Our scoring cannot give credit for what it cannot see, which is why a recipe resting on four umbrella terms finishes below the Good band that the typical adult dry food holds.

Read that as a food with an unusually private recipe rather than a food that will let your dog down. The analysis is complete. Vitamins and trace minerals come with doses printed against them, and plenty of dogs eat this happily for years.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, Meat and Animal Derivatives (22% including 4% Chicken), Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Vegetables (1.3% Dried Peas, equivalent to 4% Peas), Minerals.

Cereals is the first word on the panel, which tells you the grain fraction is the biggest single part of the recipe and nothing else besides. The term stretches from good whole grains down to the plainest milling leftovers, and because it names nothing, the mill stays free to change what goes in from batch to batch. Derivatives of vegetable origin, a little further down, works exactly the same way.

The meat entry reads 22% meat and animal derivatives, of which 4% is named. The named share is what the front of the bag calls it. Everything else can be any part of any warm-blooded land animal, which in practice means the parts of chicken, pork or beef that never reach a butcher's counter. Protein finishes at 23.9% of dry matter, enough for an adult dog in ordinary work without standing out.

Vegetables get one line and an honest one: 1.3% dried peas, which the label helpfully translates back to 4% peas before drying. That is a garnish rather than a vegetable course, and printing the conversion is a small piece of candour on a list that otherwise keeps its cards close.

The added nutrition is dosed in print and reads sensibly for an everyday food, with vitamin A and vitamin D3 both declared, vitamin E at 70mg and methionine at 1,500mg backing up the protein side. Zinc arrives at 100mg in its oxide form, which dogs take up less readily than the chelated versions used on more elaborate labels. Selenium comes as sodium selenite at 0.10mg. The antioxidants at the end are declared by job, not by name.

The last umbrella term is oils and fats. Poultry fat, beef tallow or a vegetable oil would all fit, and the bag never says which. Fat is declared at 7.0%, which keeps energy down at 330 kcal per 100 grams where 357 is typical for adult dry food. The daily bowl ends up a little fuller than on a richer kibble.

Chicken takes the named 4% here, the most familiar meat in British dog bowls and a highly digestible one. Sensitivities show up against chicken more than any other meat, simply because dogs meet it so often. If poultry has meant itching before, the beef version is the better pick.

£1.04 a kilo from the 12kg bag and £1.25 a kilo from the 2kg, with the same recipe in both.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 255 grams a day here, working from roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to about £0.26 a day. Let the waistline set the final portion.