Sainsbury's Nature's Goodness Adult Dry: Chicken & Vegetables review

Both bags finish inside our Good band, the chicken a little ahead of the lamb, and that band is where the middle of the adult dry shelf lands. What lifts them both is naming. Thirty per cent of each recipe is a single named species with the meal and fresh shares given separately, and every plant on the list is identified by name. The chicken noses ahead because more of its named meat arrives dried instead of fresh. Your dog would notice nothing of that in the bowl.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (30%) (Chicken Meal 22%, Freshly Prepared Chicken* 8%), Sweet Potato*, Potato*, Dried Peas* (6%), Chicken Fat*, Dried Beet Pulp*, Chicken Gravy, Linseed* (2%), Minerals, Yeast Products (0.2%, as a source of Prebiotic MOS), Dried Cranberry*, Dried Blueberry*, Marigold Flower*, Turmeric*, Dried Spearmint. *Natural ingredients

The meat is where this range earns its reputation. Chicken is declared at 30%, made up of 22% chicken meal and 8% freshly prepared chicken, while lamb at 30% is 18% lamb meal and 12% freshly prepared lamb. That balance is the important part. The water in fresh meat cooks off, while meal has been dried before it ever goes in. Leaning on meal means the meat you read on the front is meat that survives into the finished kibble.

Protein converts to 26.1% of dry matter on the chicken, 25.5% on the lamb, with fat at 15.2% in both bags. Estimated carbohydrate is 47.8% and 45.7%, either side of the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. Those are respectable numbers for a grain free kibble, and the fat figure in particular gives an active dog something to work with.

Sweet potato and potato hold it together, with dried peas at 6% behind them, and dried beet pulp brings the fibre. There is no grain in either bag. The lamb adds potato protein, which lifts the protein reading without adding any animal material, and it is worth spotting if you are counting on meat to supply all of it.

The omega source in both recipes is linseed at 2%, and that is why neither needs fish oil. The omega 3 arrives in its plant form. A dog turns that into the forms skin and coat actually use, though not as quickly as it does with fish oil, so allow a coat a few weeks before judging. Yeast products at 0.2% bring a prebiotic MOS, a piece of the yeast cell wall. The bacteria further down the gut feed on it.

Nothing in the short tail is left unnamed: dried cranberry and dried blueberry, marigold flower, turmeric and dried spearmint. All of it sits below the minerals at trace level. Those are the label's flourish, and its substance lies elsewhere. The minerals themselves are added as oxides and sulphates. Selenium arrives as sodium selenite, the mineral salt, and not the yeast form.

Chicken at 30% here, 22% of it chicken meal and 8% freshly prepared. Nothing else on the list is animal material. The fat is chicken fat and the gravy is chicken gravy. That makes it a genuinely single species recipe, worth picking for a dog whose diet is built around one bird. It is the higher energy of the pair at 376 kcal per 100g, with protein at 26.1% of dry matter.

£3.45 a kilo for both varieties, sold in 2kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 223 grams of the chicken a day, or 230 grams of the lamb. Both of those figures work from around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is roughly £0.77 and £0.79 a day. The chicken pack asks 165 to 375 grams for a dog of 10kg to 30kg, and the lamb 170 to 385 grams. Use your dog's shape to settle where between the guide and the estimate they belong.