Pro Plan Large Athletic Adult Sensitive Skin review

Our scoring lands this food alongside the middle of the adult dry shelf, both of them in the Good band, and the two forces holding it there pull in opposite directions. In its favour, no land meat is named anywhere on the list and salmon carries the meat side on its own. Carbohydrate converts to 39.1% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical for adult dry food.

Against that, corn appears in several guises behind the fish, soya meal helps with the protein figure, and the animal fats and digest still leave the animal unsaid. Taken together it reads as a competent, fish-led food for a large dog with touchy skin. It earns its place in the middle of the shelf and is not carried there.

Ingredients, as declared: High quality salmon* (17%) (including head, bone, meat), Rice* (14%), Dried salmon protein*, Corn protein meal*, Corn*, Animal fats, Soya meal*, Dried beet pulp*, Corn grits*, Digest, Corn starch, Dried vegetable fibre, Minerals, Dried egg*, Soyabean oil, Fish oil

Salmon at 17% heads the list and the label names head, bone and meat, which is honest about what goes in. Being fresh fish, much of that 17% is water by the time the kibble is made. Dried salmon protein in third place is what keeps the fish story true in the finished food. The pack does not declare moisture, so we work from the 8% a kibble normally holds. On that basis protein converts to 30.4% of dry matter.

The skin and coat case is built on fats rather than on a botanical tail. Fish oil supplies long-chain omega 3s, soyabean oil adds omega 6, and the salmon itself contributes to both. Zinc is dosed at 110 mg per kilo, and skin leans on that trace mineral harder than on any other. On a food with this name, that is the sort of detail you want printed.

Behind the fish, rice at 14% and corn in its various forms carry the starch, with corn protein meal and soya meal raising the protein figure without adding meat. Carbohydrate converts to 39.1% of dry matter, under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food, and dried vegetable fibre with beet pulp handles the fibre at 3.0%.

Two entries stop the label being a clean single-species list. Animal fats and digest, the palatant that makes kibble worth eating, both carry animal protein or fat with no species named. Most dogs will not notice either way. For a dog on a formal exclusion trial it is the reason this cannot be the whole answer, even though the named meat never leaves salmon.

The mineral panel is dosed in print, with iron at 120 mg, manganese at 46 mg and copper at 13 mg per kilo alongside the zinc. Vitamin E comes in at 550 IU and vitamin C at 140 mg. Selenium comes as sodium selenite at 0.035 mg per kilo, a restrained level of the more commonly used of the two permitted forms.

£3.88 a kilo, sold in a 14kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 212 grams a day, which works out at £0.82 a day. Behind that sits an assumption of 840 kcal a day, the standard maintenance estimate being 110 × bodyweight^0.75. This recipe is written for much bigger dogs. Under an hour of activity, the label asks 305 grams a day for a 25kg dog and 605 grams for a 70kg dog.