Simpsons Premium Adult: Lamb & Brown Rice review

The two flavours finish alongside each other in our scoring. Our Good band takes both in, which is where most adult dry food lands, and the lamb trails the chicken by a shade. Very little separates them. They declare the same protein and the same fat, but the lamb starts from a smaller dried meat figure and carries more ash, and that is enough to move it a place. Both are sound everyday bowls for the dog whose name is on the bag.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried Lamb (min 28%), Brown Rice (min 26%), Maize, Oats, Chicken Fat, Beet Pulp, Dried Egg, Lamb Gravy (3%)Brewers Yeast, Potato Protein, Salmon Oil, Minerals, Linseeds, Vitamins, Yucca Extract, Cranberries, Mannanoligosaccharides (MOS), Fructooligosacharides (FOS), Nucleotides, Glucosamine, MSM, Chondroitin.

Both labels open with dried meat rather than fresh, and that is a more useful starting point than it looks. The water has already gone from both, at a minimum of 30% dried chicken and a minimum of 28% dried lamb. What the composition prints is therefore near enough what ends up in the kibble. Both convert to 26.1% protein on a dry matter basis. The chicken estimates at 43.8% carbohydrate and the lamb at 42.3%, both a little under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food.

Brown rice at a minimum of 26% does the main carrying in both, with maize and oats behind it. Because the bran is left on, that rice carries more fibre than the polished sort. Cooked oats sit easily with most dogs.

The small print is where Simpsons puts its effort. MOS and FOS are prebiotics. Their business is with the large intestine's own bacteria, not with the dog. Nucleotides, brewers yeast and dried egg sit alongside them, and glucosamine, MSM and chondroitin all appear for the joints. No quantity is printed against a single one of them, so how much is in there stays unknown.

Chicken fat supplies the fat in both flavours, the lamb included, and salmon oil follows as the omega 3 source with linseeds in support. For skin and coat, that pairing makes sense. It also means neither bag is free of fish, and the lamb is not free of chicken, which only matters if you are ruling an ingredient out on purpose.

The composition finishes with the bare words minerals and vitamins, and no separate panel breaks those into named entries with amounts. The food is sold as a complete diet and nothing suggests it is short of anything, but a reader who likes to check a zinc or a vitamin E figure will not find one. Trace amounts of yucca extract and cranberry close the list.

Dried lamb at a minimum of 28% with a lamb gravy at 3%, and potato protein added to shore up the protein total, which the chicken recipe does without. Ash is declared at 10.0% here against 8.0% in the chicken, and the added fat still comes from chicken.

The chicken is £4.73 a kilo and the lamb £4.75. Both come in 2kg and 12kg bags, with a 2 x 12kg option for a larger household.

Take a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition and assume around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That dog eats about 233 grams of the chicken a day, or about 236 grams of the lamb. That works out at £1.10 and £1.12 a day. Simpsons asks 205 to 300 grams for a dog between 15kg and 25kg, and where the two disagree, go by your dog's waistline.