Royal Canin German Shepherd 5+ review

Our scoring leaves this one in the Average band, a step below the Good band that the middle of the adult dry shelf reaches. Three of the first four places go to rice, maize flour and wheat gluten before any meat appears, and the animal entries name nothing in particular. Transparency reads Poor alongside protein and processing, with nutritional balance landing in our Good band.

Read the analysis on its own and it is unremarkable, not poor. Protein converts to 27.2% of dry matter, fat to 20.7% and estimated carbohydrate to 41.8%, under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. The pack leaves moisture out, so those dry matter figures rest on the usual 8% assumed for a kibble. The band is a comment on how little this label commits to, not a warning about the dinner in front of your dog.

Ingredients, as declared: Rice, maize flour, wheat gluten*, dehydrated poultry proteins, animal fats, hydrolysed animal proteins, cellulose powder, vegetable fibres, beet pulp, minerals, soya oil, fish oil, copra oil, yeasts products, dried tomato pulp (source of lycopene), hydrolysed collagen (0.9%), yeasts (source of manno-oligosaccharides), marigold meal, hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin). * L.I.P.: protein selected for its very high digestibility.

Rice and maize flour open proceedings, and the third entry is wheat gluten, which is where the label chooses to put its digestibility badge. That is worth pausing over: the asterisk marking a protein picked for how well a dog absorbs it sits against a cereal protein, not against the bird.

Dehydrated poultry proteins arrive fourth. Dehydrated is the helpful word here: the water is gone before the weighing. Poultry is the unhelpful one. Chicken, turkey, duck or goose: any of them can be behind it, and a recipe written that way can move between them without the label changing a letter. Animal fats and hydrolysed animal proteins are no more specific.

The senior touches are real, not decorative. Hydrolysed collagen is declared at 0.9%, chondroitin arrives from hydrolysed cartilage, dried tomato pulp is included as a lycopene source and yeasts supply manno-oligosaccharides for the gut. Copra oil, pressed from coconut, sits alongside the animal fats, while fish oil supplies the marine omega 3s.

Fibre is doing more work here than on an ordinary adult kibble, declared at 3.6% and drawn from cellulose powder, vegetable fibres and beet pulp. Cellulose is the one to understand. It adds bulk and very little else, a purified plant fibre that keeps a less active older dog comfortable without being a nutrient in its own right.

The label does not print an energy figure, so the 384 kcal per 100g here is calculated and best taken as a guide. The mineral panel is dosed in print, with zinc at 144 mg, iron at 72 mg and selenium at 0.18 mg per kilo. Clinoptilolite at 10 g per kilo is a mineral clay, working as a processing aid and not as nutrition.

£5.73 a kilo, in a single 12kg bag.

The standard comparison, a 15kg adult in moderate condition needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75), comes out at roughly 219 grams and £1.25 a day. This food is aimed at a far bigger animal than that: the label asks 312 grams a day for a 30kg shepherd at low activity, so work the bag out against your own dog's weight.