Step Up Dry Food Adult: Chicken With Fish 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: Poultry Meal (18.5% incl. Chicken 14.5%), Rice, Whole Barley (16%), Maize, Dried Peas (9%), Fish Meal (4%), Whole Grain Oats (4%), Poultry Fat (4%), Beet Pulp, Poultry Gravy, Minerals, Dried Apple (1% equivalent to 6.5% Apple), Dried Sweet Potato (1% equivalent to 3% Sweet Potato), Salmon Oil (0.5%), Dried Chicory, Glucosamine (0.025%), Chondroitin (0.015%)

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.

Poultry meal at 18.5% leads, with chicken named at 14.5% inside it and fish meal at 4% taking the second animal slot. It is the most interesting recipe of the three. Fat is the lowest in the range at 9% and energy the lowest at 345 kcal per 100 grams. A steadier dog is what that combination is for. The label also adds glucosamine at 0.025% and chondroitin at 0.015% for the joints, along with taurine at 500mg and L-carnitine at 100mg per kilo. Moisture is not declared on this one, so the dry matter figures work from the standard 8% assumption, putting carbohydrate at 53.2%.

£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.