Seven Pet Seven Grain Free Adult Small Breed: Lamb With Sweet Potato & Mint review

The salmon finishes in our Excellent band with the chicken and the lamb in Good, level with the typical adult dry food, so whichever animal you pick you are buying a carefully built bag. The salmon leads the group, the chicken sits just behind it and the lamb comes in third. Nutritional balance reads Good for the chicken and Average for the salmon and the lamb. The gaps are small enough that your dog's own preference is the better tiebreaker.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb 50% (including Freshly Prepared Lamb 30%, Dehydrated Lamb 18% & Lamb Digest 2%), Vegetables (including Sweet Potato (23%), Peas (9%), Potato), Pea Protein, Flaxseed, Digestive Care Pack (Beet Fibre, Fructooligosaccharides (96 mg/kg), Mannanoligosaccharides (24 mg/kg)), Fish Oil, Minerals, Mint (0.2%)

Chicken leads at 55%, with the salmon at 53% and the lamb at 50%. Each label prints its split, and the dried share is the number worth watching. Freshly prepared meat carries a lot of water that the oven takes away. The chicken recipe stands out there with 26% dehydrated chicken, the biggest dried share of the three.

Depending on the recipe, sweet potato sits between 22% and 26%, peas between 7% and 9%, with potato behind them. No grain features anywhere. Carbohydrate lands between 40.2% and 43.4% of dry matter, comfortably under the 46.2% a typical adult dry food carries.

The same Digestive Care Pack goes into every bag: beet fibre with FOS at 96 mg/kg and MOS at 24 mg/kg. These are prebiotic fibres, food for the bacteria a dog already has rather than new bacteria going in, and a sensible inclusion in a small dog's bowl where an upset shows itself quickly.

Flaxseed and fish oil handle the omega 3s in all three, with the salmon recipe adding 4% salmon oil of its own. Marine oils go to work in a dog most directly, and that is why they turn up even in the chicken and the lamb.

Each trace mineral comes with a dose printed: zinc and iron at 50 mg, manganese at 35 mg and iodine at 1 mg per kilo. Copper and selenium appear on some of the three labels and not others. Calcium runs from 1.74% to 2.17% of dry matter, a comfortable adult level for a small dog.

Lamb at 50%, from 30% freshly prepared and 18% dehydrated, with pea protein behind the meat and mint at 0.2% to finish. It carries the most ash at 10% and the least energy at 358 kcal per 100 grams, and it shares our Good band with the chicken.

£7.47 a kilo, sold in 2kg bags.

On the usual basis, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat 222 to 235 grams a day depending on the recipe. That takes about 840 kcal a day as the starting point (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), and lands between £1.66 and £1.75 a day. Most dogs on this food are a good deal lighter than 15kg, and the labels stop at 13kg, asking 180 to 220 grams for a dog of 10kg to 13kg.