Skinner's Field & Trial Light & Senior review

Our scoring puts this recipe in the Average band while the typical adult dry food manages our Good band, and the first line of the ingredients list explains why. Maize and naked oats come before the meat, estimated carbohydrate reaches 63.6% of dry matter against a typical 46.2%, and protein at 19.6% of dry matter is modest. The dog this bag was built for still gets a decent bowl. It is a light, cereal-based ration with genuine joint dosing and a sensible calorie level, and our scoring leans hardest on meat content, which is the one thing this recipe deliberately keeps small.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize, Naked oats, Poultry meat meal, Barley, Beet pulp, Brewers yeast, White fish meal, Dried egg, Poultry fat, Vitamins and minerals, Whole linseed, Glucosamine 350mg/kg, Chondroitin sulphate 150mg/kg, MSM 50mg/kg

Maize opens the list with naked oats behind it and poultry meat meal third. The oats here are naked oats, the hull-less sort that carries more oil and protein than the ordinary kind. Maize is a dependable energy cereal that most dogs digest without complaint once it has been cooked. Barley follows, and it adds fibre with a slower release again.

The animal side is poultry meat meal with white fish meal and dried egg behind it. Meat meal here has been dried and rendered, and what the label declares is roughly what the kibble holds. Fish meal brings a good spread of amino acids along with its unmistakable smell. The catch is that neither is pinned to a species. Behind poultry could sit chicken, turkey, duck or goose, and white fish covers a whole net's worth of options. For most dogs that changes nothing at all, but for a dog being taken carefully through an elimination diet it changes everything.

Protein lands at 19.6% of dry matter and fat at 8.7%, which is a genuinely light analysis, and estimated carbohydrate at 63.6% of dry matter is the other side of that same coin. Energy comes out at 347 kcal per 100g against 357 for the typical adult dry food, so the saving per gram is real but modest, and the scoop still needs weighing rather than guessing.

Nowhere does this label do better than its supplement panel. Glucosamine at 350mg/kg, chondroitin sulphate at 150mg/kg and MSM at 50mg/kg are each printed with an amount. Carnitine is dosed at 100mg/kg, the entry that marks out a weight-control diet. Taurine at 500mg/kg is a generous helping of an amino acid the heart relies on. Whole linseed supplies plant omega 3s, while beet pulp and brewers yeast handle fibre and B vitamins between them.

£2.93 a kilo, sold in 2.5kg and 15kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 242 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which comes to £0.71 a day. On the bag, 150 to 260 grams covers a dog between 10kg and 20kg. On a slimming diet the tape measure beats the table every time.