Step Up Dry Food Adult: Beef With Lamb review

All three recipes land in our Good band, which is also where the broad middle of the adult dry shelf comes to rest. They finish close enough together that our reading gives you no reason to prefer one over another. The meat is the thing keeping the range at that level. All of it is concentrated meal and none of it fresh, part of it named only by family, and on the beef recipe the leading entry is meat and bone meal. That names no animal at all beyond the beef declared inside it. What stops it slipping any lower is that everything else is set out plainly, with percentages printed against the grains, the peas and the extras, and a fully dosed vitamin and mineral panel underneath.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Bone Meal (16% incl. Beef 8%), Rice, Whole Barley (16%), Maize, Dried Peas (8%), Poultry Meal, Poultry Fat (5%), Lamb Meal (4%), Whole Grain Oats (4%), Poultry Gravy, Beet Pulp, Dried Apple (1% equivalent to 6.5% Apple), Dried Sweet Potato (1% equivalent to 3% Sweet Potato), Minerals, Salmon Oil (0.5%), Dried Chicory

Every recipe opens with a meat meal. That is worth understanding, and nothing to worry about. A meal is meat that has been cooked and ground with most of its water already gone. That is why 18.5% of poultry meal counts for so much more in the bag than 18.5% of fresh poultry would. The catch is the naming. Poultry is a family word that covers goose and duck as much as chicken and turkey. The beef recipe's meat and bone meal is vaguer still. That is why the label helpfully prints the named share inside each one.

The cereal side is conventional and competently chosen. Rice is easy on most dogs, whole barley at 16% keeps its bran and brings fibre and micronutrients with it, and whole grain oats at 4% do a similar job. Maize sits in there as the everyday filler of the group. There is no wheat anywhere in the range, which will matter to a household that has been avoiding it.

Dried peas at 8% or 9% depending on the recipe do two things at once. Fibre and antioxidants come with whole peas, and so does a spread of vitamins. They also add plant protein that flatters the declared protein figure a little. At this level they read as a genuine ingredient rather than as bulk, which is the line peas cross when they start climbing higher up a list.

The tail is a mixture of the token and the useful. Dried apple at 1% is stated as the equivalent of 6.5% fresh apple and dried sweet potato at 1% as the equivalent of 3%, which is honest labelling of what are essentially garnishes. Salmon oil at 0.5% is small but purposeful, since a little of it goes a long way for coat condition. Dried chicory is the quiet winner of the group. It is a root rich in inulin, the fibre that useful gut bacteria feed on.

The added panel is dosed properly, with zinc at 50mg, iron at 40mg, manganese at 30mg, copper at 8mg, iodine at 1.5mg and selenium at 0.15mg per kilo. Vitamins A, D3 and E sit alongside them. The trace minerals are sulphates and oxides, the ordinary choice at this level of the market. Selenium arrives as sodium selenite, the form most makers use even though the yeast-based form is generally absorbed better.

Meat and bone meal at 16% leads this one, with beef named at 8% inside it and lamb meal at 4% further down, so two red meats share the animal side. That leading entry is the vaguest in the range, since bone meal can come from any animal at all. The analysis shows it: crude ash is declared at 9.5% and calcium converts to 2.56% of dry matter. That is comfortably the highest of the three, a level suited to a settled adult and not to a growing dog. Moisture is declared here, not assumed, and carbohydrate works out at 48.9% of dry matter, the lowest figure in the range.

£2.07 a kilo from the 14kg bag, which all three recipes are sold in. The chicken with fish recipe also comes in a 2kg bag, which works out at £2.70 a kilo.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat somewhere between 228 and 243 grams a day depending on the recipe. Both figures rest on around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The daily figure comes out between £0.47 and £0.50. The label's own table asks 200 to 340 grams for a dog between 12kg and 25kg, so weigh the first few meals and let the waistline settle where in that band your dog belongs.