Skinner's Field & Trial Working 23 review

Our scoring puts this grade in the Average band, a step below the Good band where the typical adult dry food finishes. Three things pull on it. The animal content is never named, and a share of the protein comes from maize gluten. The label declares no moisture either, so the dry matter reading assumes the 8% usual for a kibble. On that basis carbohydrate works out at 50.8% of dry matter, above the 46.2% typical for the category. None of that describes a food that fails a dog. It describes a label that tells a careful reader less than a modern one would, on a recipe kennels have fed for years precisely because it keeps condition on a busy dog without drama.

Ingredients, as declared: Wheat, Meat and bone meal, Maize, Naked oats, Prairie meal (maize gluten), Rice, Poultry fat, Wheatbran, Vitamins and minerals

The carbohydrate side spreads across several grains: wheat first, maize third, naked oats fourth and rice sixth. Naked oats are the pick of them, a husk-free oat that digests easily once cooked and brings fibre and B vitamins along. Wheatbran near the bottom adds a little more fibre, and fibre finishes at 2.4% of dry matter, which is light.

Meat and bone meal is the main animal entry, a rendered dried meal that concentrates protein and carries natural calcium and phosphorus. The name is the weak part, because any animal could be behind it. Most dogs will not care; the one whose sensitivity you are trying to pin down might.

Prairie meal is maize gluten under a friendlier name, and it is there to top up the protein figure without leaning further on the meat. Plant protein does not feed a dog as well as meat protein does. So the 23.0% on the analysis is not quite the same 23.0% it would be if all of it came from the animal side.

Poultry fat supplies the energy and much of the flavour, added back after rendering because a dried meal comes out low in fat. It is more specific than plain animal fat, though poultry still stretches across every domestic bird.

Every line of the added panel carries a dose: vitamin A at 17500iu, vitamin D3 at 2000iu and vitamin E at 200mg per kilo. Zinc at 90mg and manganese at 50mg head the trace elements, all in the oxide and sulphate forms, with no chelates here. Ash sits at 10.9% of dry matter, which is where a meal-based recipe with bone in it tends to land.

£1.90 a kilo, in 2.5kg and 15kg bags.

Our own energy sum gives a 15kg adult in moderate condition roughly 245 grams a day, on about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That puts the daily figure at £0.47. At that weight the label's own table asks 150 to 260 grams, written as it is for a dog actually out working. Start there and adjust to condition.