Wainwright's Adult Dry Food: Lamb & Rice review

Our Good band holds all four recipes, and it holds the middle of the adult dry shelf too. They are close enough together that nothing meaningful separates them but the animal on the front.

The plant side is what stops the range climbing. Rice, barley and oats between them account for more of each bag than the meat does. Protein and processing reads Average across all four, with nutritional balance Average on three of them and Poor on the lamb. What lifts it is candour. Every animal entry is a named species with a percentage against it, the meal and fresh shares are split out, and the transparency pillar reads Outstanding on every bag.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb (33%) (Dried Lamb 28%, Freshly Prepared Lamb 5%), Rice (26%), Whole Grain Barley (22%), Whole Ground Oats (4.5%), Rapeseed Oil, Beet Pulp (4%), Dried Peas (3% equivalent to 12.5% Peas), Linseed (2%), Dried Carrots (1% equivalent to 8% Carrots), Seaweed (0.2%), Yucca Extract (0.02%)

In each bag the 33% meat headline leans on dried meat, not fresh, which is the right order of things for a kibble. Water makes up much of fresh meat, and the oven drives nearly all of it off. So the 28% dried lamb, salmon or turkey is what actually reaches the bowl, with the chicken recipe using 26% chicken meal in the same role. Protein converts to between 24.7% and 28.6% of dry matter across the four.

Rice at 26% and whole grain barley form the plant backbone, with whole oats behind them. Both cook down to something a dog digests easily and bring their own fibre and micronutrients, and the whole grain form of barley keeps more of that than a refined one would. If gluten is something you steer around, note that barley carries it.

What follows is short and does honest work. Beet pulp between 4% and 5% supplies the fibre and dried peas at 3% stand in for a larger weight of fresh peas. The omega 3 comes from whole linseed at 2%, and dried carrots at 1% come from roughly 8% fresh carrot. Seaweed at 0.2% and a trace of yucca extract close things out.

Rapeseed oil is the added fat throughout. Against the other vegetable oils it measures up well, and being a plant oil it keeps each recipe free of any second animal. Only the salmon brings marine omega 3s to the bowl. In the other three that job falls to linseed, and a dog is slower to turn plant omega 3 into the skin-active forms, so give a coat weeks to answer, not days.

The vitamin and mineral panel is written out in full, with vitamin E at 150mg, zinc at 50mg, iron and manganese at 40mg each, copper at 5mg, iodine at 1mg and selenium at 0.1mg. Sulphates and oxides do the job in place of chelates, so this is a standard panel dosed openly, not an upgraded one.

Lamb at 28% dried and 5% freshly prepared, on 22% whole grain barley. This is the gentlest recipe of the four on protein at 22.5% and the one carrying the most mineral at 10.0% ash, which points to more bone arriving with the dried lamb.

£3.33 a kilo from the 15kg bag and £4.75 a kilo from the 2kg, the same in all four recipes.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works through 232 to 260 grams a day depending on which recipe you pick. On about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), that puts feeding between £0.77 and £0.87 a day. The chicken bag's own table asks 170 to 295 grams for a dog of 12kg to 25kg. If those two disagree, let your dog's waistline settle it.