Tails.com Example Recipes Adult: Tailored Blend For Staffordshire Bull Terrier review

Three of these five examples come out in our Average band, with the Lurcher and the Rottweiler a tier up in our Good band, which is also roughly where the adult dry category's midpoint falls. The spread is narrow and the reasons are shared. Chicken is named and reasonably generous, and the linseed, seaweed and joint entries are all sensible inclusions. Against that, maize and its two refined fractions do a lot of the carrying, several blends lean on meat and bone meal that names no animal, and no calcium figure is declared anywhere. The Staffordshire Bull Terrier example has the lowest declared protein of the five at 21.8% of dry matter and the highest carbohydrate at 54.4%, which is what separates it from the others. Protein and processing and nutritional balance read Average across almost all of them, while transparency reads Good or better on every blend. Worth remembering throughout that these are illustrations rather than the food that would actually arrive for your dog, which is mixed to its own specification.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize, Chicken 26.2% (Chicken Offal 11%, Chicken Meal 10.5%, Chicken Fat 3%, Chicken Gravy 1.7%), Beet Pulp, Poultry 3.7% (Poultry Meal 2.6%, Poultry Fat 0.7%, Poultry Gravy 0.4%), Maize Protein Feed, Minerals and Vitamins, Brown Rice, Meat and Bone Meal 1.5%, Beef Meal 1.5%, Linseed, Maize Protein, Dried Yeast, Dried Seaweed, Salt, Whole Dried Egg 0.1%, Brewer's Yeast, Salmon 0.1% (Salmon Oil), Chicory Extract, Glucosamine Hydrochloride, MSM, Chondroitin Sulphate, Yucca Extract, Prebiotics 0% (MOS), Marigold, Beta Glucans, Antioxidant.

Chicken is the named meat in all five, declared between 26.2% and 34.2% and broken down into meal, offal, fat and gravy. Chicken meal comes dried and concentrates protein efficiently as a result. Chicken offal is organ meat, genuinely nutrient dense even if the word does it no favours. A second entry called simply poultry follows at between 3.7% and 5.4%, and poultry is a family term rather than a species, so that portion could be any domestic fowl.

Maize is the workhorse here, first on the list in three of the five and never far down in the other two. It arrives in three forms: whole maize, maize protein feed and maize protein. Those last two are refined fractions. They lift the protein figure without adding meat, so keep that in view as you read the percentage. Brown rice, sweet potatoes and potatoes sit behind them, and beet pulp handles the fibre.

Three of the blends add meat and bone meal alongside beef meal: the Bichon Frise cross, the Cavapoo and the Staffordshire Bull Terrier. It runs at 3.2% each in the first two and 1.5% each in the third. The beef is named; the meat and bone meal is not, and it could come from any animal. It is an ordinary enough calcium and phosphorus source, but it does mean those blends will not anchor an elimination diet.

The supporting cast is thoughtful. Plant omega 3s come from the linseed, with fibre and antioxidants alongside. Dried seaweed adds iodine and a wide spread of minerals, chicory extract supplies inulin as a prebiotic, and yucca extract is in there for stool odour. Glucosamine hydrochloride and chondroitin sulphate appear on all five, with MSM on three of them, though none of the three carries a declared dose, so there is no figure to judge them by. Salt appears on every list as a flavour enhancer.

The Lurcher and Staffordshire Bull Terrier blends go a little further than the rest, adding whole dried egg, brewer's yeast, salmon oil at 0.1%, MOS as a prebiotic and beta glucans. They are the only examples here carrying fish or egg. Trace elements are dosed in print on every blend, with zinc running from 37.29 mg to 56.73 mg per kilo and L-carnitine from 25.53 mg to 52.68 mg. Both shift with the dog the blend was built for, which is rather the point of the whole system.

Maize leads and chicken follows at 26.2%, the smallest named meat share here, with poultry at 3.7% and meat and bone meal and beef meal at 1.5% each. Protein is declared at 20.1% and carbohydrate converts to 54.4% of dry matter, the highest of the group. That leaves this example at the foot of the range while the Lurcher and the Rottweiler climb into our Good band. It does add whole dried egg, salmon oil at 0.1%, brewer's yeast and beta glucans, so it is not a plainer recipe, just a starchier one.

Tails.com mixes each blend to order and sends it out in 1kg packs, with the amount set by the dog it was built for.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat somewhere between 221 and 235 grams a day across these five examples. It is worked off about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Your own blend would come with its own daily amount printed on it, and that is the figure to feed to.