Royal Canin West Highland White Terrier Adult review

This lands in our Average band, a rung below the Good band that the typical adult dry food reaches. The band is mostly about proportions. Cereal takes the first, third and fourth places on the list. Protein comes in at 21.0%, or 22.8% of dry matter, and estimated carbohydrate at 51.7% of dry matter runs above the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. A settled westie can still be fed perfectly well on it. The skin and coat entries lower down are genuinely doing something useful.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize flour, dehydrated poultry proteins, rice, maize, animal fats, hydrolysed animal proteins, dehydrated pork proteins, wheat, chicory pulp, soya oil, minerals (including pentasodium triphosphate (0.35%)), fish oil, linseed (0.5%), fructo-oligosaccharides, borage oil (0.1%), marigold meal, glucosamine from fermentation, hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin). *L.I.P.: protein selected for its very high digestibility.

Maize flour opens the list, dehydrated poultry proteins take second and rice third, so this is a cereal-framed biscuit with a concentrated meat powder worked through it. Protein lands at 21.0%, or 22.8% of dry matter, and estimated carbohydrate at 51.7% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. Fat is the more generous number at 16.0%, or 17.4% of dry matter, which is where a fair share of the energy comes from.

Only one animal on the list is given a name, and that is dehydrated pork proteins. Relatively few small breed recipes reach for pork, so finding it here is genuinely useful. Family names cover everything else on the animal side, the fats and the hydrolysed proteins and the poultry alike. Pork is the single species you can be certain is in there.

The skin and coat case is made quietly rather than shouted about. Omega 3 in its plant form comes from linseed at 0.5%. Borage oil at 0.1% adds gamma linolenic acid, and fish oil supplies the marine forms a dog takes up most directly. The percentages are small and a coat answers over weeks rather than days, so give any change a proper stretch of time before you judge it.

The prebiotic pair here is chicory pulp and fructo-oligosaccharides. Both are in there for the gut's useful bacteria, and crude fibre is declared at a light 1.4%. Pentasodium triphosphate at 0.35% is the dental entry, a mineral salt that ties up calcium in the saliva so that soft plaque has a harder time hardening into tartar.

Wheat sits mid list with the two maize entries around it, and that is the part of the label a sensitive westie's owner will read twice. Plenty of dogs handle cereal without a flicker of bother. If yours has a history that says otherwise, this is the detail to weigh before the bag is opened.

£8.03 a kilo, sold in 1.5kg and 3kg bags.

Our standard yardstick is a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which would take 214 grams a day here at £1.72. A westie is a much smaller animal. At low activity the label's own table asks 93 grams at 6kg and 136 grams at 10kg, so expect a daily figure well under the reference.