Wilko Senior Complete Dry review

Disclosure is almost the whole of why this one finishes in our Average band, a step under the Good band where the typical adult dry food sits. When a recipe is described as cereals, oils and fats and meat and animal derivatives, the contents could be respectable or very ordinary, and an owner has no way of telling which. So we read the label as written and give it no benefit of the doubt. The declared analysis explains the rest: protein converts to 22.8% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 56.5%, so the grain side is carrying the recipe. What remains is a complete food with its vitamins and minerals fully dosed, and that is the job the bag was built for.

Read it as a plain, everyday bag for an older dog with no particular requirements, and it does that job. Read it as a label you can interrogate, and it will not answer.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, Meat and Animal Derivatives (4% Chicken in the Clover-shaped Kibble*), Oils and Fats, Vegetables (4% Peas in the Disc-shaped Kibble), Minerals, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.5% Beet Pulp in the Clover-shaped Kibble*), Yeasts. *Clover-shaped Kibble: typically 40% of the product. Disc-shaped Kibble: typically 40% of the product.

Cereals opens the list, which tells you two things at once. Grain is the biggest part of this recipe, and the label is not going to say which grain. The term covers everything from the best cereals to the poorest, and since no type is named the grain can change between production runs.

Meat and animal derivatives follows, with 4% chicken named inside it. Under European law the term takes in the fleshy parts of slaughtered warm-blooded land animals and the derivatives of processing their carcasses, which spans good material and unremarkable material alike. Plenty of dogs eat foods built this way for a lifetime without a moment's bother. What you cannot do with it is identify or rule out a species, which is the one thing an owner chasing a reaction actually needs.

There are two kibbles in the bag, a clover shape carrying the named chicken and the beet pulp at 0.5%, and a disc shape carrying the peas at 4%. A mixed bowl is not just a gimmick with an older dog, since a change of shape and texture can be enough to restart a flagging appetite.

Fat at 7.5% is the senior adjustment, and it is a real one, gentler than the brand's adult recipe and sensible for a dog whose exercise has tailed off. Protein is unchanged at 21%, so the trim comes off the fat rather than out of the animal side. A thin or still-busy older dog may simply need a larger portion.

The vitamin and mineral panel is the most forthcoming part of the label, dosed entry by entry. Vitamin E is at 70mg, zinc at 100mg, iron at 60mg, manganese at 50mg, copper at 8mg, iodine at 2.5mg and selenium at 0.1mg. The forms are the ordinary ones, zinc as an oxide and selenium as sodium selenite in place of a selenised yeast. Absorption is not being pushed to its limit, but nothing an older dog needs from a complete food has been left out.

£1.00 a kilo, sold in a 3kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 250 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £0.25 a day. The label asks 160 to 320 grams for a dog between 10kg and 25kg, so let the waistline be the judge.