Webbox Everyday Complete Dry Adult: Chicken review

The chicken comes out in our Average band and the beef in Poor, both under the Good band where the typical adult dry food finishes, and the reason is the same for each. Protein and processing and transparency both read Poor, and both readings depend on being able to see what is in the food. Cereals, meat and animal derivatives, oils and fats and derivatives of vegetable origin are legal category terms stretching across the whole range of quality. A label written in them cannot demonstrate which end it belongs to.

The declared analysis raises a second question of its own. Moisture at 28.0% is far above what a dry food normally holds, and protein at 33.5% is unusually high for a recipe led by cereals with 4% named meat. Those two figures do not sit easily together, so the ingredient list is the better guide to what is really in the bag. For an adult dog with no known sensitivities, it remains a straightforward everyday feed.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, meat and animal derivatives (4% chicken from dehydrated in pale disc), derivatives of vegetable origin, oils and fats, minerals, vegetables (4% peas in green piece).

Cereals lead both recipes, and the pack never says which cereal. That could be rice, maize, wheat or a mixture, and it can change between production runs. No wholegrain description is attached either, so how much of the grain goes in intact is anyone's guess.

Meat and animal derivatives sit second, with 4% of the recipe named: beef in the red disc on one bag, dehydrated chicken in the pale disc on the other. The legal phrase covers the fleshy parts of slaughtered warm blooded land animals and the products of processing the carcass. That range is wide enough to hold both first rate material and very ordinary material, and the pack gives no way to tell which is here.

Oils and fats and derivatives of vegetable origin follow the same pattern. Between them they account for the fat and a portion of the plant content, and neither term commits to a source. The one plant entry that is named is the 4% pea in the green pieces, and whole peas are a decent inclusion, bringing fibre and a spread of vitamins along with some plant protein.

The coloured pieces are what sets this food apart on the shelf, and the additive list is honest about how they are made, naming colours alongside antioxidants. Colours do nothing for a dog nutritionally. They are there so the food looks varied to the person pouring it, and they are the reason artificial additives show up on this recipe at all.

One part of the analysis deserves a pinch of salt. Moisture is declared at 28.0%, a long way above the level a kibble normally sits at. The protein and fat declarations of 33.5% and 20.0% are high for a list led by cereals with 4% named meat. The dry matter column that follows from those figures is a rough guide and no more than that.

The mineral side is the most transparent part of the pack, and every entry is dosed in print. Zinc sulphate at 278mg, iron as ferrous sulphate at 133mg, manganese sulphate at 94mg, copper sulphate at 28mg, calcium iodate at 1.6mg and sodium selenite at 0.55mg. Sodium selenite is the usual supplemental form of selenium across the trade, and these are ordinary working doses.

Chicken supplies the named 4% on this bag, described as dehydrated chicken in the pale disc, which makes it the easier pick for a household keeping a dog off red meat. Its list puts the derivatives of vegetable origin ahead of the oils and fats.

Both flavours come in 2.5kg bags. Per kilo, the chicken records £1.36 and the beef £5.44, a difference that comes from how the two bags are described on their listings. The recipes are built the same way.

Working from about 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), the portion comes to roughly 268 grams a day. That is £0.36 on the chicken and £1.46 on the beef. The pack's table asks 180 to 300 grams for a dog between 10kg and 20kg.