Techni-Cal Lifestages Mini Adult review

This one finishes in our Good band, level with the typical adult dry food and no higher. The reason is structural rather than sinister. A concentrated meat entry leads, but wheat and maize follow it immediately and take a large share of the finished kibble, and the label stops short of publishing its mineral doses.

Read the rest of the analysis and the picture softens. Protein converts to 27.5% of dry matter, respectable for a small dog that is not asking a great deal of its dinner. Fat at 15.4% keeps the bowl appetising, and ash at 6.6% points to lean meat rather than bone. This is a plain, workable everyday food for a small dog with no history of grain trouble, not a showpiece, and it does not pretend otherwise.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated chicken, turkey and duck, wheat, maize, chicken fat, beet pulp, salmon oil (cold pressed), brewers yeast, linseed, dried apple, fructo-oligosaccharides, sodium chloride.

One dehydrated meat entry opens the list, covering chicken, turkey and duck between them. A dehydrated meat comes with its water already removed, so first place here means more than a fresh meat topping the list. It is why the protein figure holds up as well as it does. The trade is transparency. Three birds under a single heading tells you what is in the bag but not in what proportion. Narrowing down which bird a reactive dog objects to is beyond this label.

Wheat and maize are the carriers. Maize is a useful cereal for a small dog, cooking down into readily available energy and bringing a little protein with it. It is a good part of why this food reaches 378 kcal per 100 grams. Wheat is the entry that gives owners pause, since it is named in more food intolerances than any other cereal. If that is your small dog's history, the Mini Adult recipe in Techni-Cal's grain free Pure Nature line was built for precisely that.

Beet pulp handles the fibre at a level that firms a stool without weighing the gut down. The fructo-oligosaccharides at the end of the list are a prebiotic, and the gut's own bacteria are what they feed. Dried apple brings pectin and a touch of natural sweetness, and brewers yeast adds B vitamins and the savoury note that persuades a picky small dog to finish the bowl.

The omega side is this recipe's quiet strength. Cold pressed salmon oil and whole linseed appear together, one marine and one from a plant. On the label, omega 3 is declared at 5.09 g and omega 6 at 21.17 g. Cold pressing matters here, because heat is what damages the fragile fats in a fish oil. For a small dog whose coat gets admired at the park, that is a real advantage.

The vitamin panel is fully dosed, with vitamin E at 300 mg, niacin at 21.50 mg and choline chloride at 1640 mg among the entries. The trace elements are another matter. No zinc or copper figures are published, and manganese is missing too. Skin and coat lean on those minerals hardest, immunity as well, so a printed panel would have counted in this recipe's favour.

£3.33 a kilo, sold in 2.5 kg and 5 kg bags.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 222 grams a day, coming to £0.74, based on roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Most dogs eating this recipe are far smaller than that, and the label's own table asks 95 grams for a 5kg dog and 30 grams for a 1kg one.