Royal Canin Giant Adult review

Our Average band is where this one finishes, with the typical adult dry food a tier above it in our Good band. The analysis is not the culprit. Protein converts to 30.4% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 37.8%, well under the 46.2% typical, and energy is genuinely high at 418 kcal per 100g against a typical 357.

The marks come off for what the label leaves open. None of the poultry proteins, the hydrolysed animal proteins or the animal fats names a species, and three separate plant proteins top up what the meat starts. Both the protein and processing reading and the transparency reading come back Average. Judged as a big, calorie-dense maintenance food for a giant dog, it still does its job.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated poultry proteins, wheat flour, animal fats, maize flour, maize, vegetable fibres, hydrolysed animal proteins, maize gluten, beet pulp, wheat gluten, minerals, soya oil, yeasts products, fish oil, algal oil Schizochytrium sp., glucosamine from fermentation, marigold meal, hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin).

Dehydrated poultry proteins take first place before any grain, and that ordering matters on a big-breed kibble. Dehydration has already taken the water out of the meat, so an entry heading the list still heads it once the kibble comes out of the oven.

What follows is a good deal of cereal. Wheat flour, maize flour and maize handle the starch, with maize gluten and wheat gluten behind them adding protein. Concentrated plant proteins of that kind are an easier way to lift an analysis than meat is, and a dog makes less of them than of protein from an animal. Read the declared 28.0% as a combined figure.

The joint pair is worth calling out for one specific reason. Glucosamine here is made by fermentation, not taken from crustacean shells, so a household that keeps shellfish out of the dog's bowl can feed this without a second thought. Chondroitin comes from hydrolysed cartilage as usual.

Omega 3 arrives from two directions: fish oil, and an algal oil from Schizochytrium, which is the same family of algae that oily fish get their own long-chain omega 3s from in the first place. Marigold meal and yeast products finish the list off.

This is a rich analysis, and deliberately so. Protein converts to 30.4% of dry matter, fat to 21.7% and estimated carbohydrate to 37.8%. Moisture is declared at 8.0%, so those figures come off the label, with no assumption needed. Zinc is dosed at 131 mg per kilo and vitamin D3 at 1000 IU, and clinoptilolite at 10 g per kilo is a mineral clay used in the making, not a nutrient.

The limitation is the one that runs through the whole breed and size range: nothing animal is named. The poultry could be any bird, and the fats and hydrolysed proteins any species at all. Most giant breeds will eat it happily for years. What it cannot be is the food you use to prove which ingredients your dog reacts to.

£4.47 a kilo, sold in a 15kg sack.

Against a 15kg adult in moderate condition on about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), that comes to roughly 201 grams and £0.90 a day. A giant breed eats a great deal more than that: the label asks 511 grams a day for a 60kg dog at low activity, so plan the sack around the dog you actually have.