Step Up Dry Food Mature review

Our scoring places this recipe in the Good band. The middle of the adult dry category comes to rest there as well. Two things hold it there. The declared meat is modest, with poultry meal at 18.5% and turkey meal at 4% doing the animal work between them. Carbohydrate converts to 53.9% of dry matter against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food. Working the other way, the label is unusually forthcoming for its type. Chicken is named inside the poultry meal, the joint and heart entries carry printed figures, and nothing in the mineral panel is left vague. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Average while transparency reads Outstanding, which is a fair picture of a food that gets on with its job without drama.

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry Meal (18.5% incl. Chicken 14.5%), Rice, Whole Barley (18%), Maize, Dried Peas (6%), Turkey Meal (4%), Whole Grain Oats (4%), Beet Pulp, Poultry Fat (3%), Poultry Gravy, Minerals Dried Apple (1% equivalent to 6.5% Apple), Dried Sweet Potato (1% equivalent to 3% Sweet Potato), Salmon Oil (0.5%), Minerals, Dried Chicory, Glucosamine (0.025%), Chondroitin (0.015%)

Poultry meal at 18.5% heads the list, with chicken pinned at 14.5% inside it and turkey meal adding a further 4% lower down. A meal has lost most of its water before it reaches the mixer, so it concentrates protein efficiently. Naming chicken inside the poultry figure is more candour than this part of the category usually offers. The label goes quiet in just one place: the rest of the poultry share stays unnamed.

The starch side is deliberately old fashioned and none the worse for it. Rice sits second, whole barley is declared at 18%, and maize and whole grain oats fill in behind. Whole barley keeps more of its fibre and micronutrients than the refined forms, and oats are gentle on an older gut once they have been cooked. Barley does bring gluten with it, one to note where gluten is off the menu.

You find the mature thinking in the small print. Glucosamine at 0.025% and chondroitin at 0.015% are printed as percentages, not left as a promise on the front of the bag. Taurine is dosed at 500 mg per kilo as heart support. L-carnitine at 100 mg per kilo is the entry aimed at helping an older body put fat to use. The 8.0% fat declaration is the practical half of the same idea.

The fats come from poultry fat at 3% and salmon oil at 0.5%. The marine omega 3s come from the salmon oil, and they do useful work on an older dog's coat and joints. Fish is present as a result. Beet pulp and dried chicory handle the fibre. The inulin in chicory is food for the bacteria lower down, and that usually shows up as steadier stools.

Dried apple and dried sweet potato each appear at 1%, both declared alongside the fresh weight they stand for, 6.5% apple and 3% sweet potato. Those are flourishes rather than load bearing entries. The mineral panel is printed in full. Zinc sits at 50 mg and selenium at 0.15 mg per kilo, with iron at 40 mg, manganese at 30 mg, copper at 8 mg and iodine at 1.5 mg in between. All of them are sulphate and oxide forms.

£2.07 a kilo, sold in a 14kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 235 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which comes to £0.49 a day. The label's own table asks 180 to 320 grams for a dog between 12kg and 25kg. An older dog will usually sit at the lower end of that. Feed to the ribs.