Royal Canin Dalmatian Adult review

Our scoring reads every food against the same yardstick, which is why a recipe built to a breed-specific brief comes out where this one does. It sits in the Average band, a step under the Good the typical adult dry food occupies. Nutritional balance reads Average, helped along by fat at 19.6% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate at 46.5%, close to the 46.2% typical for the category.

Protein and processing comes back Poor and transparency reads Average, and that is where the placing is decided. The recipe leans on flours and plant protein, and the animal entries it does carry stay unnamed. The fair way to take that is as a general nutrition comparison rather than as a comment on the design brief. A low animal protein content is exactly what the breed pictured on the bag needs, and few foods on the shelf are written that way.

Ingredients, as declared: rice, maize flour, animal fats, vegetable protein isolate*, wheat flour, egg powder, maize gluten, minerals, vegetable fibres, hydrolysed animal proteins, fish oil, soya oil, hydrolysed crustaceans (source of glucosamine), marigold extract (source of lutein), hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin).

Egg powder is the quality entry on this list and the one to notice. Few proteins are as complete as egg, and it is easily digested and rich in the minerals and micronutrients that come with it. In a recipe carrying no meat meal, it is doing the work a dried meat would normally do. It is also, by design, a modest share of the whole, which is why the panel reads 22.0% protein as fed.

Rice, maize flour and wheat flour form the base. Flour cooks and digests more readily than whole cereal. The energy figure reaches 390 kcal per 100g partly for that reason, on a recipe with this little meat in it. Wheat is the entry most often blamed when a dog reacts to a cereal, so it is worth registering, though most dogs eat it without incident.

Maize gluten and the vegetable protein isolate top up the protein figure between them. A by-product of maize processing, maize gluten is genuinely protein-rich, and the isolate carries the maker's asterisk about protein chosen for very high digestibility. Neither is meat, and a dog absorbs plant protein less completely than protein from an animal, so a modest protein figure built this way asks for a decent quality of ingredient behind it.

Animal fats in second place are where much of the energy comes from, at 18.0% as fed and 19.6% of dry matter. The word names no species, which is the standing limitation of the phrase. Soya oil and fish oil sit further down to bring the omega 3s that a fat blend of this kind does not supply on its own. Vegetable fibres provide the bulk, giving 3.0% crude fibre of dry matter, and marigold extract carries lutein, with tea extract declared at 150 mg per kilo as a polyphenol source.

The added nutrition is fully printed, and the mineral panel has clearly been thought about for the breed. Iron is at 72 mg, zinc at 151 mg, manganese at 51 mg, iodine at 4.6 mg, selenium at 0.22 mg and copper held at 7 mg per kilo. Vitamin A is at 28000 IU and vitamin D3 at 800 IU. Hydrolysed crustaceans for glucosamine and hydrolysed cartilage for chondroitin round the list off. Neither carries a quantity, so the joint side is a supportive touch with no dose behind it.

£5.73 a kilo, sold as a 12kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 216 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which comes to £1.24 a day. A dalmatian is a bigger dog than that. The pack's own table asks 231 grams a day at 20kg, rising to 358 grams at 36kg for a dog at low activity, so portion from there and let the waistline confirm it.