Trophy Pet Foods Trophy Standard Working Dog: Chicken review

Our scoring puts all three in the Average band, one step under the Good band that holds the typical adult dry food. The reason sits in plain view at the head of the list: wheat first, a named meat at min. 14% and carbohydrate estimated at between 52.2% and 58.1% of dry matter. Protein and processing reads Average across the three and nutritional balance reads Poor, while transparency comes back Excellent on every bag. None of that makes this a food to be nervous about. It is a plain, grain-led working kibble of the sort that has been feeding working dogs for decades, honestly labelled, with every animal entry named and a full mineral panel printed in doses. On a big daily ration for a hard-run dog, it does exactly what it says it will.

Ingredients, as declared: Whole grain wheat, Chicken meal (min 14%), Whole grain maize, Whole grain barley, Chicken oil, Oats,Chicken gravy, Unmolassed beet pulp, Dried peas, Dried potatoes, Dried carrots (min 4% total vegetables), Salmon oil, Yucca schidigera, Blackcurrant, Rosehip

Whole grain wheat opens every bag, and the whole grain part is worth crediting, since it keeps the bran and the germ that refined flour leaves behind and with them more fibre and more micronutrients. It is still wheat, though. Wheat, more than any other cereal, sits behind a rumbling gut or an itchy coat in a dog that reacts to grain, so weigh it first against your own dog's history.

The meat is a meal in every recipe, declared at min. 14%. Meal is meat with its water already removed, so that percentage holds through the oven. A fresh meat figure would have shrunk. That makes 14% worth more than it first sounds. It is still a modest share for a kibble. More than anything else, that is why these recipes read the way they do.

Whole grain maize and whole grain barley follow the wheat, with oats behind them. Barley and oats are both easily digested once cooked and both bring useful fibre along, and unmolassed beet pulp adds the steadying kind further down. Dried peas, dried potatoes and dried carrots make up the declared min. 4% of vegetables, which is a small share but at least an itemised one.

Chicken gravy, chicken digest and chicken oil are the palatability entries, doing an honest job. A plain cereal-led kibble needs something to taste of, and these are named, not left as an anonymous flavouring. Salmon oil near the end brings marine omega 3s, ready for a dog to use on skin and coat.

The mineral panel is identical across the three and printed with doses, zinc at 126mg, manganese at 30mg and iron at 20mg per kilo. Conventional sulphates and oxides do the work, with no chelates on the list. Selenium arrives as sodium selenite at 0.1mg. Pet food allows two forms of it, and this is the workaday one that most makers reach for. Yucca schidigera, blackcurrant and rosehip close the list, the yucca aimed at what the dog leaves behind on the grass.

Chicken meal at min. 14% is the meat here. Chicken oil and chicken gravy sit behind it, so the poultry theme carries right through the list. Protein converts to 24.2% of dry matter, fat to 11.0% and carbohydrate to 52.2%, all from a declared 9% moisture, and the 328 kcal per 100g is an estimate rather than a declaration. Of the three, this is the only recipe written for seniors as well as adults.

£2.29 a kilo, sold in a single 14kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at £0.59 a day on the chicken and lamb recipes and £0.57 on the beef. That comes from roughly 256 and 247 grams a day against an assumed 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Every label asks 223 grams for that dog, and a genuinely working animal will want more than a resting one.