Pro Plan JM Joint Mobility Dry review

Rice at the head of the ingredients list is the fact that shapes our reading. The food comes out in our Average band where the typical adult dry food comes out in our Good band, and the reasons stack up gently. Cereal leads, the dried proteins behind it are only half named, and soya protein powder is doing protein duty in fifth place.

Set against that, protein converts to 32.6% of dry matter and carbohydrate to 44.1%, a shade under the 46.2% typical of the shelf. That protein figure is a respectable showing for a kibble. For the dog it was built for, an older adult who gets on with fish and could do with a hand keeping weight off tired joints, this is an easy and palatable bowl.

Ingredients, as declared: Rice, Dried salmon protein, Dried poultry protein, Wheat flour, Soya protein powder, Corn, Dried egg, Digest, Fish oil, Pea hulls, Pork fat, Minerals, Cellulose

Rice heads the list, which tells you the recipe is built on a gentle, well-tolerated carbohydrate rather than on meat. Dried salmon protein comes next, then dried poultry protein. Both are concentrated dry proteins, and unlike fresh meat they keep their weight through cooking, so the protein figure they support is real. Protein converts to 32.6% of dry matter with moisture assumed at the 8% standard for a kibble, since the label does not print it.

The joint thinking lives in the oils. The long-chain omega 3s a joint recipe leans on for comfortable movement come in with the fish oil, and the salmon protein ahead of it points the same way. What you will not find on this pack is a printed glucosamine or chondroitin figure, so read this as a food supporting joints through fats rather than through a declared supplement dose.

Vitamin E is declared at 940 IU per kilo, noticeably generous for an adult food, and that fits a recipe carrying a lot of fragile marine oil that needs protecting from going rancid. Vitamin C sits alongside it at 140 mg per kilo.

Pea hulls and cellulose supply the fibre. Purified plant fibre is what cellulose is, close to indigestible by design. It earns its keep in a food where a portion has to fill a dog without loading energy onto joints that would rather carry less. Pork fat is named for what it is, a small piece of transparency worth crediting on a label of this type.

Soya protein powder and wheat flour lift the protein and bind the kibble, and neither is doing the recipe's headline job. The mineral panel is dosed line by line, with zinc at 130 mg, iron at 140 mg and manganese at 54 mg per kilo. Selenium arrives as sodium selenite. Two forms are legal in pet food and this is the everyday pick, the less well absorbed of them.

Sold in 3kg and 12kg bags.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, on the standard maintenance estimate of 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75), would eat about 226 grams. The label is more sparing than that, asking 140 grams a day for the same 15kg dog, which reflects a recipe written for dogs whose joints do better carrying less. The waistline will show you which of the two figures suits your dog.