Salters Maintenance review

The Average band is where our scoring settles this, while the middle of the adult dry market holds the Good band. The arithmetic behind that is easy to follow. Estimated carbohydrate reaches 51.9% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical for a dry food, protein converts to 25.0% and fat to 15.2%. The first ingredient on the label is a cereal and not an animal. The plant side is doing more of the carrying than the meat side.

Judged against its own brief, this is still a decent bowl. An adult on a predictable routine, with normal weight and no particular demands on it, will do perfectly well here. The smaller entries on the label are chosen with more care than the headline suggests. It simply means the recipe is built around cereal with chicken in support, and the score reads that construction rather than the dog's experience of it.

Ingredients, as declared: Ground Maize, Chicken Meat Meal, Round Grain Rice, Spray Dried Chicken Meal, Chicken Fat, Maize Gluten Meal, Sunflower Meal, Dried Sugar Beet Pulp, Full Fat Linseed, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Yeast (Autolyzed), Natural Seaweed, Dried Whole Egg, Cellulose Fibre, Vitamins and Minerals.

The bulk of this recipe is announced by the first word on the list, ground maize. Chicken meat meal follows immediately behind it and a second dried chicken entry sits fourth, so meat and cereal alternate down the top of the label. Because both chicken entries are already dried, their positions are honest ones, with no water waiting to cook away. Protein finishes at 25.0% of dry matter and fat at 15.2%, gentle figures that suit a dog on a steady routine.

Carbohydrate is estimated at 51.9% of dry matter, above the 46.2% typical for an adult dry food. Cooked maize and rice both digest easily, so the question is not whether the starch works but how much of the bowl it takes up. On a dog that holds condition easily, weigh the portions and do not eyeball them.

Halfway down comes maize gluten meal. Milling leaves it behind, and it is used to raise a protein figure. It does exactly that, though plant protein is not the same currency as meat protein in a dog's diet. Reading the declared protein with a little discount applied is the sensible approach here.

There is a genuinely good tail to this label, better than the opening would lead you to expect. Full fat linseed carries plant omega 3. Extra virgin olive oil brings vitamin E and antioxidants, natural seaweed supplies iodine, and a small share of very usable protein comes from dried whole egg. Autolysed yeast helps keep the flavour up. None of these are big entries, but every one of them was put there on purpose.

Dried sugar beet pulp is the main fibre and a fair choice for digestive steadiness, with crude fibre at 3.0% of dry matter. Behind it sits cellulose fibre, purified plant material that adds bulk and almost nothing else. Calcium works out at 0.74% of dry matter, an ordinary adult level, and ash at 4.9% of dry matter is low, which suggests a meal with little bone in it.

No dosed additive panel is published for this range. The maker's own statement rules out artificial colours, antioxidants and preservatives, and puts preservation down to a natural vitamin E extract plus proper drying of the cooked kibble. It is a clear enough promise; it just leaves the trace mineral doses unpublished, so there is nothing to check on that side of the label.

£5.23 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 15kg bags.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at about 229 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is £1.20 a day. At 366 kcal per 100g the energy figure is our estimate and not a declared number, so let the waistline be the real check on portion size.