Winner Senior Lite review

Our Good band holds this recipe, along with the middle of the adult dry category. The arithmetic behind it is straightforward. Protein converts to 20.9% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 60.6%, well above the 46.2% typical for adult dry food, and neither meat is given a percentage on the label. None of that stops it doing what it sets out to do. An older or heavier dog gets a full bowl with less fat in it, and the added lysine shows someone thought about protein quality along the way.

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

Maize leads, and dehydrated chicken and dehydrated beef follow it, with dehulled oats after that. Because the meat is dried before weighing, those entries are honest about what they contribute, though without percentages there is no telling how large the contribution is. The analysis describes a deliberately light food, with protein at 19.0% and fat at 7.5% as fed.

L-Lysine at 800 mg per kilo is the detail worth pausing on. Lysine is an essential amino acid a dog cannot make for itself, and topping it up is a sensible move on a recipe where cereal supplies a fair share of the protein.

Beet pulp and dehulled oats carry the fibre, whole linseed supplies plant-form omega 3, and chicory extract brings inulin to feed the bacteria in the large intestine. Yeast extract and chicken digest are there to make a lower-fat kibble taste worth eating, which for an older dog with a fading appetite is not a small thing.

The trace minerals are printed with figures: copper at 15 mg, manganese at 40 mg, iodine at 1.5 mg and iron and zinc at 100 mg each per kilo. They come in the older oxide and sulphate forms, not as chelates.

Poultry fat is the one loose entry, since the label never says which farmed bird it came from. On an older dog who has eaten happily for years that is neither here nor there. The question only arises where you are ruling one bird in or out.

£2.56 a kilo, in 3kg and 15kg bags.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition the estimate comes to about 260 grams a day at £0.67, working from around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance sum). The label's own table asks 220 to 265 grams at that bodyweight, so let the waistline settle the difference.