Step Up Dry Food Small Breed Adult review

This one lands in our Good band, level with the middle of the adult dry category. Moisture is not printed, so the dry matter figures rest on the 8% a dry food normally carries, and no calcium figure is given either. Alongside that, the animal content is meal led, a slice of the poultry names no bird, and starch converts to 51.5% of dry matter against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Average, with transparency reading Outstanding. Read it as a plain small breed kibble that would place higher with more meat and less starch behind it. For a small adult dog that gets on with poultry it is perfectly straightforward to feed.

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry Meal (20% incl. Chicken 18%), Rice, Whole Grain, Barley (17%), Maize, Poultry Fat (5.5%), Dried Peas (4%), Turkey Meal (4%), Whole Grain Oats (4%), Poultry Gravy, Beet Pulp, Minerals, Dried Apple (1% equivalent to 6.5% Apple), Dried Sweet Potato (1% equivalent to 3% Sweet Potato), Salmon Oil (0.5%), Dried Chicory

Poultry meal at 20% leads, with chicken named at 18% of that total, so nearly all the headline meat is pinned to a species. Taking the water out of a meal concentrates its protein, and the 23.0% protein declaration reflects that. Turkey meal at 4% adds a second named bird further down the list.

The grain side is conventional and well chosen. Whole barley is declared at 17%, with rice, maize and whole grain oats behind it. Whole barley holds onto fibre and micronutrients that refined forms lose, and oats digest easily once cooked. Barley carries gluten, and that counts only where gluten is being avoided.

Poultry fat at 5.5% is the main added fat, and poultry there covers any domestic fowl rather than one particular bird, so it loosens the naming that the meat entries worked to establish. The marine omega 3s here come from salmon oil at 0.5%, the form a dog uses most readily for skin and coat. Fish comes with them.

Beet pulp and dried chicory do the fibre work at the back of the list. Chicory supplies inulin, and the helpful bacteria further down the gut live on it. Dried apple and dried sweet potato both appear at 1%, each with its fresh equivalent printed alongside, 6.5% apple and 3% sweet potato, which is a scrupulous way to declare a small ingredient.

Zinc is declared at 50 mg per kilo, iron at 40 mg, manganese at 30 mg, copper at 8 mg, iodine at 1.5 mg and selenium at 0.15 mg. The mineral panel leaves nothing to guesswork. They come in the sulphate and oxide forms, the plainer option of the two. The selenium is sodium selenite, the standard supplemental form right across the category.

£2.69 a kilo, sold in 2kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 229 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £0.62 a day. Most dogs on this recipe will be well under that weight though. The label asks 100 to 200 grams for a dog between 5kg and 12kg, so use the table and then adjust by feel.