Royal Canin Maxi Adult review

The Average band is where this finishes, with the Good band above it holding the middle of the adult dry category. Two things put it there. Start with the ingredients list: the meat that leads names a family of birds, never one of them, and cereal appears in six different guises. Then there is the shape of the analysis. Protein converts to 28.6% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 42.8%, under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food, though plant material is still doing most of the bulk work. None of that makes it a shaky daily food for a big, settled dog, and the mineral panel behind it is dosed line by line.

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

Dehydrated poultry protein opens the list, which is where you want meat to be, and dehydrated is the useful form of it. With the water already gone, the label's declared share and the kibble's actual share are near enough the same. Poultry is the word to watch: it covers any domestic bird and lets the recipe move between chicken, turkey, duck and goose without a single word changing on the pack. Dehydrated pork protein appears further down and is named properly, which is a small point of clarity worth having.

Wheat flour, maize, wheat, maize flour, maize gluten and barley between them make up the plant side of the bowl. Barley is the pick of that group, cooking down into an easily digested carbohydrate with useful fibre attached. Maize gluten is the entry to note. It tops up the protein figure using plant material, and a dog makes less of that than of the animal kind. The finished numbers come out at protein 28.6% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate 42.8%.

Animal fats sit high on the list without saying which animal they came from, and soya oil and fish oil follow further down. The genuinely interesting one is algal oil from Schizochytrium, a marine algae that is grown, not fished. It delivers DHA directly, so a dog's body does not have to convert it out of a plant omega. It is a thoughtful inclusion on a food this ordinary.

Glucosamine here comes from fermentation and not from crustacean shells, which is worth knowing if shellfish is off the menu in your household, and chondroitin comes from hydrolysed cartilage. No dose is printed against either, so treat them as a helping hand and not a measured supplement.

The added minerals are all given a figure. Zinc is at 127 mg, manganese at 43 mg, iron at 33 mg, copper at 10 mg, iodine at 3.3 mg and selenium at 0.06 mg per kilo. Above them sit vitamin A at 15800 IU and vitamin D3 at 1000 IU. The clinoptilolite at 10 g per kilo is a naturally occurring clay, and its job belongs to the production line rather than the bowl. Fibre is the one line that reads short at 1.3%, which is roughly what beet pulp on its own leaves you with.

£4.55 a kilo, sold in 3kg and 15kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat around 226 grams a day at £1.03, assuming roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The dogs on the pack are considerably bigger: the label asks 278 grams for a 26kg dog on low activity, rising to 413 grams at 44kg.