Royal Canin Chihuahua Adult review

Our scoring reads Average here, with the typical adult dry food a band higher at Good. The gap comes from how the label reads, and nothing in the bowl is alarming. Cereals lead the list, the animal content is described no more precisely than poultry, and almost nothing carries a percentage, which limits what any assessment can credit. A Chihuahua that is thriving on it is not doing anything wrong, and the breed-minded extras are genuine. The label simply declares too little detail to score well.

Ingredients, as declared: Rice, maize, dehydrated poultry proteins, wheat gluten*, animal fats, hydrolysed animal proteins, beet pulp, minerals (including pentasodium triphosphate (0.35%)), vegetable fibres, fish oil, soya oil, fructo-oligosaccharides, borage oil, marigold meal, glucosamine from fermentation, hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin). *L.I.P.: protein selected for its very high digestibility.

Rice and maize open the list, with dehydrated poultry proteins in third place. Dehydrated protein has had its water removed before weighing, so it pulls more weight than its position suggests, and the declared analysis reaches 28% protein. Carbohydrate still does most of the carrying, converting to an estimated 43.7% of dry matter, a little under the 46.2% typical for adult dry food.

The naming is where a careful reader slows down. Poultry names a category, not a species, and the animal fats and hydrolysed animal proteins name no animal at all. The asterisked L.I.P. mark is Royal Canin's own shorthand for protein selected for very high digestibility, a maker's claim and not a measurement, though hydrolysed and dehydrated proteins are genuinely easy for most dogs to process.

The breed tailoring lives in the tail of the list. Pentasodium triphosphate, at 0.35% the only percentage on the label, binds the calcium in saliva that would otherwise harden into tartar, a sensible inclusion for a breed whose teeth share a very small jaw. Glucosamine from fermentation and hydrolysed cartilage, a source of chondroitin, make up the joint pair, listed without doses.

Fish oil, soya oil and borage oil share the coat work, borage oil bringing the gamma-linolenic acid that skin-focused recipes favour. Beet pulp and vegetable fibres steady digestion, fructo-oligosaccharides add a prebiotic, and the added vitamin and mineral panel is fully dosed, down to the selenium.

£8.03 a kilo when we checked, sold in 1.5kg and 3kg bags.

The label feeds to bodyweight, from 24 grams a day for a 1kg dog up to 62 grams for a 3.5kg dog. Taking the label's 55 grams a day for a 3kg Chihuahua at the per-kilo price, feeding works out at roughly 44p a day.