Winner High Energy review

This one reads Good for us, level with the middle of the adult dry category. Put plainly, the analysis is what this food does best. Protein converts to 30.8% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 43.2%, both better than a typical adult dry food manages. Its transparency reads Good and no better, because of what the label withholds. Not one meat entry is given a percentage, and the poultry fat never names its bird. For a hard-working dog whose owner is not running an elimination plan, that gap is paperwork rather than nutrition.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize, Dehydrated Beef, Dehydrated Chicken, Poultry, Fat, Whole Linseed, Beet Pulp, Minerals, Chicken Digest, Yeast Extract, Chicory Extract.

Maize opens the list, with dehydrated beef and dehydrated chicken directly behind it. What lifts protein to 28.0% is two dried meats in place of one fresh one. Drying takes the water out before the ingredients are weighed, so the entry keeps its place in the finished kibble.

There is no oat entry on this list, so maize does the starch work more or less alone. Beet pulp is there for fibre, and chicory extract further down carries inulin, a prebiotic that feeds the bacteria in the large intestine.

Whole linseed is the omega 3 source. It is the plant form. A dog turns it into the skin-active and joint-active forms slowly, and quicker from fish oil. Allow a coat a few weeks to show a difference, not a few days.

Ash converts to 10.4% of dry matter, on the higher side for a kibble and a normal consequence of building protein from dried meats, which bring bone minerals along with them. Fibre is light at 2.4% of dry matter, which suits a dog with a settled stomach more than one that needs bulk to firm things up.

Copper at 15 mg, iron and zinc at 100 mg each, manganese at 40 mg and iodine at 1.5 mg per kilo all carry printed figures. They come as sulphates and oxides. A gut takes up the chelated forms more easily.

£2.56 a kilo, sold in 3kg and 15kg bags.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to roughly 249 grams a day, or £0.64, using the standard maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). The label's own table asks 230 to 275 grams at the same bodyweight, and a dog genuinely working hard will eat more than that.