Wilko Natures Best Dry Senior review

This lands in our Average band, a step below the Good band that the middle of the adult dry shelf occupies. Structure is what holds it back, and nothing here is alarming. Protein converts to 23.9% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 57.1%, so the cereals carry the recipe. Much of what remains is described only as meat and animal derivatives, oils and fats or fish and fish derivatives. We read what is declared, and we do not assume the best of a category. What the label does declare, it declares properly, including the two joint ingredients with percentages. As a complete food for an older dog with no special requirements, it is balanced and dosed as it should be.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals (Wholegrain Barley 37%*, Wholegrain Wheat 15%*), Meat and Animal Derivatives (Chicken 14%, Chondroitin 0.025%), Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (Chicory Extract 0.1%*), Vegetables (Peas 5%*), Minerals, Oils and Fats (Poultry Fat 1.5%*), Fish and Fish Derivatives, Yeasts (Brewers Yeast 0.5%*), Molluscs and Crustaceans (Glucosamine 0.05%). *Natural ingredients.

Wholegrain barley at 37% is the largest named ingredient in the recipe. Most dogs digest cooked barley easily, and it brings fibre along with selenium and copper. Keeping the grain whole preserves more of that than refining it would. It is an unglamorous ingredient doing an honest job at the base of the bowl.

Wheat at 15% sits alongside it, and this is the entry to weigh. It binds a kibble well and most dogs eat it for years without a flicker of trouble. It is also the grain behind more intolerances than any other, usually showing up in the coat, the skin or the digestion. If that has never been your dog's story, it need not become one now.

The senior thinking is small but genuine. Chondroitin at 0.025% is declared inside the meat and animal derivatives, and glucosamine at 0.05% gets a category of its own as molluscs and crustaceans, which tells you where it came from. Both are printed with percentages, which lets an owner weigh a joint claim rather than take it on faith, and the shellfish origin is the one thing to check against your own dog.

Fat is pulled down to 6.5%, which is 7.1% of dry matter, with poultry fat at 1.5% named inside the oils and fats. By any measure that is a gentle recipe, and it fits an older dog whose walks have got shorter. A lean one still running about may want more on the plate than the label suggests.

Only chicken is given a name inside the meat and animal derivatives, at 14%. Peas at 5% sit under the vegetables, chicory extract at 0.1% brings the inulin that gut bacteria feed on, and brewers yeast closes at 0.5%. The mineral panel is dosed in print throughout, in the plain forms. Zinc comes as an oxide at 100mg, with vitamin E at 70mg and iodine at 2.5mg. Selenium is sodium selenite at 0.1mg, the ordinary choice next to the yeast form a dog takes up more readily.

£1.25 a kilo, sold in a 2kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 266 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which comes to £0.33 a day. That portion rests on an estimated energy figure rather than a declared one. The label asks 185 to 320 grams for a dog between 12kg and 25kg. Where your dog sits between those two is a question for the waistline.