Vet's Kitchen Sensitive Care Senior review

On our scoring this finishes in the Good band. That puts it shoulder to shoulder with most adult dry food, and not ahead of it. The reasons are structural. Dried turkey at 22% is the only substantial meat entry. The fat and gravy that make up the rest of the 30% headline are there for flavour. Carbohydrate is estimated at 53.2% of dry matter, where the typical adult dry food runs at 46.2%. One thing a score cannot see is how carefully a recipe is aimed. Everything here points at an older dog with a delicate gut, from the prebiotic chicory to the joint doses printed on the pack, and for that dog it is an easy, well-mannered food.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey 30% (including Dried Turkey 22%, Turkey Fat 6%, Turkey Gravy 2%), Sweet Potato 26%, Potato 19.5%, Peas, Lucerne, Beet Pulp, Brewer's Yeast, Chicory Pulp (2.4% as a source of prebiotic FOS), Minerals, Seaweed Oil Extract, Glucosamine 355 mg/kg, Methylsulfonylmethane 355 mg/kg, Chondroitin Sulphate 250 mg/kg.

Turkey is declared at 30%, and the label is unusually open about what sits inside that figure: dried turkey at 22%, turkey fat at 6% and turkey gravy at 2%. Dried turkey is the part that counts. The water has gone before it is weighed, and fresh meat never holds its weight in a finished kibble the same way. Protein converts to 23.4% of dry matter. Turkey is a lean meat and an easy one to digest. Senior recipes use it a great deal for that reason.

Sweet potato takes 26% and potato 19.5%, with peas and lucerne behind them. Not a grain of cereal appears on the list. Carbohydrate is estimated at 53.2% of dry matter against 46.2% typical for adult dry food. The plant side is carrying a fair share here.

The digestion story rests on the smaller entries. Chicory pulp at 2.4% supplies the prebiotic FOS for the gut's own bacteria to feed on. Beet pulp adds soluble and insoluble fibre together, and brewer's yeast brings B vitamins with it. Crude fibre lands at 4.9% of dry matter, a steady level for a dog whose stools you would rather keep predictable.

Joint support arrives with numbers attached: glucosamine and methylsulfonylmethane at 355 mg/kg each, chondroitin sulphate at 250 mg/kg. Printed doses are the useful part, because a label that lists these without quantities tells you nothing about what actually reaches the bowl. Glucosamine and chondroitin are cartilage building blocks and methylsulfonylmethane is a sulphur compound fed alongside them.

Taurine at 476 mg and L-carnitine at 961 mg round out the older-dog thinking. Taurine matters to heart muscle, and carnitine helps the body put fat to work. Zinc and iron arrive as amino acid chelates at 48 mg each, manganese at 34 mg. A chelated mineral is the easiest kind for a dog's gut to absorb. Selenium is sodium selenite at 0.19 mg. That is the plainer of the two forms permitted here, and at a trace level it is there to meet the requirement.

The omega source is a seaweed oil extract, an algal oil rather than a marine fish one, so nothing on this ingredients list comes from a fish. That makes it a genuinely useful option for a dog kept off fish. The one honest caveat is the joint pair. Supplemented glucosamine usually comes from crustacean shells and chondroitin from animal cartilage, and neither is named on the label. A strict single-protein elimination plan needs professional input before you rely on this bag for it.

£8.07 a kilo, sold in 2.2kg and 6.6kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at about 247 grams a day. That assumes around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), and comes to £1.99 a day. For dogs between 11kg and 25kg the label's own table asks 140 to 300 grams. Where they disagree, go by how your dog looks.