Skinner's Field & Trial Working 30 review

The Good band is where our scoring lands this grade, and it is also where the typical adult dry food arrives, though the two take very different routes to get there. This one earns its place with meat leading the list and carbohydrate estimated at 33.9% of dry matter against the 46.2% usual for the category. The supplement set is printed with doses instead of being waved at. What holds it back is the same thing that holds the whole line back, an animal content that never names a bird, along with cellulose powder standing in as a fibre source. Three pillars read Good: nutritional balance, transparency and value. Protein and processing sits at Average, a fair reading of a food that does its job well without ever saying exactly which animal did it.

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry meat meal, Maize, Poultry fat, Naked oats, Beet pulp, Dried egg, Vitamins and minerals, Cellulose powder, Brewers yeast, Herb blend 750mg/kg, MOS 500mg/kg, FOS 500mg/kg, Glucosamine 350mg/kg, Chondroitin sulphate 150mg/kg, Seaweed 150mg/kg, Yucca 100mg/kg

The list opens with poultry meat meal, and the only cereal behind it is maize. That single change from the grades below does a great deal of work: wheat is gone entirely, and the estimated carbohydrate falls with it, leaving more of the bowl to the animal side.

Poultry fat and naked oats come next, then beet pulp and dried egg. Egg is a small entry that pulls its weight, a complete protein with the full set of amino acids a dog needs, and it quietly raises the quality of the protein around it. Brewer's yeast further down is a natural source of B vitamins.

The supplement tail is what separates this grade from the rest of the line, and each entry there is given with its dose. Glucosamine at 350mg/kg and chondroitin sulphate at 150mg/kg handle the joints. MOS and FOS at 500mg/kg each work as prebiotics for the gut bacteria. Seaweed comes in at 150mg/kg, yucca at 100mg/kg and a herb blend at 750mg/kg.

A careful reader will stop on one entry here, cellulose powder. It is purified plant fibre with next to no calories, and adding bulk this way is more industrial than using whole vegetables. It does no harm and it helps hold a stool together on a fatty recipe, but the reason it is there is processing, not nutrition.

This is the most modern mineral panel in the line. Iron, copper, manganese and zinc each come twice over, once in a standard salt and once as a chelate. A dog's gut generally takes up the chelate more readily. Selenium comes as organic selenium, and taurine is declared at 100mg per kilo, the sort of detail that appears on foods written with the heart in mind.

£2.79 a kilo, in 2.5kg and 15kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult in moderate condition needs around 214 grams a day, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which comes out at £0.60 a day. A dog actually working on this grade will eat more, and the label's table, asking 150 to 260 grams at that weight, is written with that dog in mind.