Skinner's Field & Trial Working 26 review

This grade reads into our Average band while the typical adult dry food sits a step higher in Good, and that is worth unpacking, because the analysis is not the problem. Protein converts to 28.3% of dry matter and carbohydrate to 42.8%, under the 46.2% typical for the category, which is a sensible balance for a dog doing a day's work. What pulls it down is naming and detail. The meat is poultry, with no bird specified, and the fat is left just as open. Wheat sits second, and the recipe declares nothing beyond the basic vitamin and mineral panel. Fed to the dog this bag was built for, it does precisely the job it promises.

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry meat meal, Wheat, Maize, Poultry fat, Naked oats, Barley, Beet pulp, Vitamins and minerals

Poultry meat meal leads. A dried meal at the head of a list makes for a genuinely meaty start, since its water is gone before the weighing. So the printed figure and the kibble's real meat share are near enough the same. Poultry is the catch. It spans every domestic fowl. Skinner's is free to change the bird from batch to batch.

Wheat and maize follow, with naked oats and barley behind them. Oats and barley are the gentler pair, digesting easily once cooked and bringing fibre and trace minerals with them. Note wheat above the others, as it is the cereal that comes up most often when a dog proves intolerant.

Poultry fat in fourth place is where the energy comes from, and at 16.0% declared this is a richer recipe than the grade below it. Fat is also what makes a kibble taste of something, so it earns its keep twice over on a dog that has been out all day.

Beet pulp handles the fibre, a moderately fermentable kind that firms up stools while adding little energy. Fibre reads 3.3% of dry matter and ash 8.2%, the lower ash telling you there is less bone in this recipe than in the meal-and-cereal grade beneath it.

The vitamin and trace element panel is printed with doses: vitamin A at 17500iu, vitamin D3 at 2000iu and vitamin E at 200mg. Zinc comes at 90mg and manganese at 50mg per kilo, in the sulphate and oxide forms. This grade keeps to the essentials, leaving the joint support and prebiotics to the top of the line.

£2.16 a kilo, sold in 2.5kg and 15kg bags.

On energy alone, a 15kg adult in moderate condition would take about 224 grams a day at roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), giving £0.48 a day. A dog genuinely in season eats well above that, which is why the label's table asks 150 to 260 grams for the same weight.