Royal Canin Maxi Digestive Care review

Our scoring puts this one in the Average band while the ordinary adult dry food reads Good, and nearly all of the distance between them comes off the ingredients list. The analysis is where the food is at its best. Protein converts to 30.8% of dry matter, fat to 19.8% and estimated carbohydrate to 39.6%, comfortably under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. That shape is genuinely good for a dry recipe. Set against that, the meat is named by family rather than by animal, the fats and the hydrolysed proteins are unnamed, and maize gluten helps top up the protein figure. A settled dog eating this happily is not being let down by any of it. The label simply tells a careful reader less than they would like to know.

Ingredients, as declared: dehydrated poultry protein, rice, wheat flour, animal fats, vegetable protein isolate*, wheat, hydrolysed animal proteins, barley, maize gluten, vegetable fibres, beet pulp, fish oil, soya oil, minerals, psyllium husks and seeds, borage oil, marigold extract (source of lutein), hydrolysed crustaceans (source of glucosamine), hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin).

Dehydrated poultry protein leads and rice follows, which is a sensible opening pair for a food about digestion. Rice is the cereal that gives most dogs the least trouble. Putting the dried meat first means most of the protein declared on the pack is already in the kibble, not waiting for the water to be cooked out. The word poultry is doing the usual work of covering several birds at once, so the species can move between production runs without the pack changing.

The digestive machinery is the reason to buy this bag and it is spread through the list rather than bolted on. Vegetable fibres and beet pulp handle bulk and stool quality, and psyllium husks and seeds add a soluble fibre that holds water in the gut. Hydrolysed animal proteins arrive in pieces small enough to be absorbed with very little work. Crude fibre finishes at 2.9%, which is moderate, so the emphasis here is on the type of fibre and not the quantity of it.

Wheat flour, wheat, barley and maize gluten fill out the plant side. Barley is the most useful of them. It cooks down easily and carries fibre and trace minerals with it. Maize gluten is the one to note. Its job is to push up the protein number with plant protein, and a dog makes less of that than of the animal sort. Vegetable protein isolate does something similar higher up the list.

Fat is where this recipe is generous, at 18.0% as fed and 19.8% of dry matter, which is what carries the energy to 377 kcal per 100g. Fish oil and soya oil sit inside that total, with borage oil below them as a source of gamma-linolenic acid and marigold extract as a source of lutein. It is a well-rounded set of oils for a food that is not sold on skin at all.

The joint entries are the same pair the maker uses across its large-breed shelf: hydrolysed crustaceans for glucosamine and hydrolysed cartilage for chondroitin. Neither carries a printed dose, so think of them as general support. If shellfish is kept out of your kitchen, note the crustacean origin.

The added nutrition is fully dosed and easy to read. Zinc comes in at 133 mg, manganese at 50 mg and iron at 38 mg, with copper at 12 mg, iodine at 3.8 mg and selenium at 0.06 mg per kilo. Vitamin A at 19000 IU and vitamin D3 at 800 IU sit above them. Clinoptilolite at 10 g per kilo is a mineral clay used in manufacture. The preservatives and antioxidants are declared as categories with no names, which is common practice throughout this part of the market.

£5.25 a kilo, sold in a 12kg bag.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at roughly 223 grams a day and £1.17, on about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The dogs this bag is written for are heavier by a good margin, so scale the amount up and let the waistline settle where it finally lands.