Royal Canin Maxi Joint Care Adult review

This finishes in our Average band, one rung under the Good band that holds the typical adult dry food. Most of that distance is about naming. Maize is the first thing in the bag. Poultry names a family of birds, never a single one of them, and the fats and hydrolysed proteins arrive with no species either. The analysis itself is decent for a food of this kind, with protein at 28.3% of dry matter, fat at 16.3% and estimated carbohydrate at 41.8%, under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. Crude fibre is unusually high at 6.8% of dry matter. Read as a joint food for a giant breed who eats it happily, it does what it set out to do.

Ingredients, as declared: maize, dehydrated poultry protein, wheat, animal fats, vegetable fibres, vegetable protein isolate*, maize flour, rice, hydrolysed animal proteins, maize gluten, beet pulp, fish oil, yeasts and parts thereof, minerals, soya oil, hydrolysed collagen (0.84%), marigold extract (source of lutein), hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin).

Maize takes the first position, with dehydrated poultry protein behind it and then wheat, maize flour and rice further down. That makes this a cereal-led recipe, which is the honest description of the first few lines. In second place, dehydrated poultry protein is still doing real work, because the water came out of it before it went into the mix. The plant side is still the larger half of this bowl.

The joint story is the reason the bag exists and it is worth reading precisely. Hydrolysed collagen is declared at 0.84%, and collagen supplies the amino acids that cartilage and connective tissue are actually built from. Hydrolysed cartilage brings chondroitin, which is the more familiar joint ingredient of the two. Glucosamine, the third name most owners look for, is not on this list at all, so the support here is a pair rather than the usual set. Neither of the two carries a printed dose.

Fibre is the quiet feature. Vegetable fibres appear high on the list with beet pulp below them, taking crude fibre to 6.3% as fed and 6.8% of dry matter, which is well above what a general adult food would carry. On a dog large enough to eat a great deal in one sitting, that extra bulk is doing a job worth having, and beet pulp in particular is a reliable friend to stool quality.

Green tea extract is dosed at 2.5 g per kilo, which is a real quantity, and it is there for its polyphenols. Lutein comes from marigold extract, the omega 3s from fish oil, and the smaller entries finish with yeasts and parts thereof. Halfway down come vegetable protein isolate and maize gluten. Both use plant protein to raise the declared figure, and a dog handles that less well than meat.

Each added mineral carries its own figure. Zinc is at 141 mg, manganese at 55 mg and iron at 42 mg, with copper at 13 mg, iodine at 4.2 mg and selenium at 0.08 mg per kilo. Vitamin A at 16500 IU and vitamin D3 at 1000 IU sit over them. Clinoptilolite comes in at 10 g per kilo, a sedimentary clay that does its work during manufacture. Moisture is the one number the pack leaves out. Everything in the dry matter column here is therefore built on an assumed 8%.

£6.03 a kilo, sold in a 10kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would take about 239 grams a day, working out at £1.44, on roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The dogs on this label are far bigger, and its own table asks 360 grams for a 26kg dog and 534 grams at 44kg.