Trophy Pet Foods Trophy Premium Maintenance review

Both bags come to rest in the Good band, and the middle of the adult dry shelf sits alongside them. Rice ahead of the meat and carbohydrate in the mid fifties as a share of dry matter are what hold them there. Working the other way, each recipe leans on one named meat meal at a healthy declared share and prints it plainly, with no derivative or unnamed animal entry on either list. Transparency reads Outstanding on the lamb bag and Excellent on the chicken as a result. These are honest everyday recipes doing an honest everyday job.

Ingredients, as declared: Rice (min. 34%), Lamb Meal (min. 30%), Maize, Chicken Fat, Unmolassed Beet Pulp (min. 3.5% vegetables), Seaweed, Minerals, Salmon Oil, Mannan Oligosaccharides, Glucosamine, Green-Lipped Mussel, Yucca Schidigera, Rosemary, Blackcurrant, Pomegranate.

Rice at min. 34% opening both lists tells you where the bulk comes from. Rice is the gentlest cereal in common use, easy to digest once cooked and far less often behind a reaction than wheat. Wheat appears nowhere in either recipe. Maize sits third in both and carries some of the same load.

The meat in both bags is meal, and that is more of a compliment than it sounds. A meal has had its water removed before it goes in, so a declared min. 30% of lamb meal or min. 26% of chicken meal is still doing that much work once the kibble leaves the oven, where a fresh meat percentage would have shrunk on the way. The trade is that no fresh meat is declared at all, so what you see on the label is what the recipe is.

The added fat in both recipes is chicken fat, with salmon oil a little further down. Both are named, with no anonymous animal fat on either list, and that is to the label's credit. The salmon oil brings marine omega 3s. A dog uses those directly on skin and coat. It does mean neither bag is free of poultry or of fish, whichever meat is on the front.

The supporting entries are identical across the two. Unmolassed beet pulp accounts for the declared min. 3.5% of vegetables and supplies the fibre. Seaweed adds iodine and a spread of trace minerals. The mannan oligosaccharides are a prebiotic, feeding the helpful bacteria further along the gut.

Glucosamine and green-lipped mussel close both lists as the joint pair. Neither one prints a dose, so the support is real and its strength unknown. Stool odour is what yucca schidigera is on the list for. Rosemary, blackcurrant and pomegranate finish things off, the rosemary earning its place by keeping the fats from turning.

Lamb meal at min. 30% is the meat here, the larger declared share of the two, and it brings a heavier mineral load with it: ash converts to 9.8% of dry matter, which is bone doing its work. Protein lands at 22.8% of dry matter, fat at 10.9% and energy at 347 kcal per 100g, the gentler of the pair on calories. This is also the bag whose additive panel is printed in full, with zinc at 172mg plus 13mg as a glycine chelate, manganese at 50mg and copper at 10.5mg per kilo.

£4.59 a kilo for either recipe, sold in 3kg and 14kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes out at about £1.11 a day on the lamb and £1.14 on the chicken. That is from roughly 242 and 248 grams respectively and an assumed 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The lamb label's own chart asks 221 grams for that dog. Your dog's waistline is the better guide between the two figures.