Winner Small review

This recipe lands in our Good band, on the same tier as the typical adult dry food. Protein converts to 22.0% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 57.3%, against the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. Neither meat entry is given a percentage, so the label leaves a reader guessing about the thing they most want to know. Its transparency pillar reads Good, because the two meats it does use are named properly. For a small dog with a settled stomach and no elimination trial in progress, this is a plain everyday bowl that will not surprise anyone.

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

Maize is the first ingredient, with dehydrated chicken and dehydrated beef next and dehulled oats behind them. Dried meat is the useful form to see, since its water has already gone before weighing, but with no percentage attached the analysis has to do the talking: 20.0% protein and 9.5% fat as fed.

The plant side is ordinary in the best sense. Oats bring fibre and a steadier starch, beet pulp gives a stool something to hold on to, whole linseed carries plant-form omega 3, and chicory extract adds inulin for the gut bacteria.

Chicken digest is the palatant, and with a small stomach to fill, a kibble that smells worth eating earns its keep. Yeast extract works the same corner of the recipe.

Poultry fat is the loosest thing on the list, with no farmed bird named behind it. Most dogs will never care, and it only starts to matter if a small dog is being taken through an elimination trial that needs every bird named outright.

Every added trace mineral is printed with a figure: zinc and iron at 100 mg, manganese at 40 mg, copper at 15 mg and iodine at 1.5 mg per kilo. All of them are in oxide or sulphate form, not the chelated kind.

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

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 252 grams a day, which comes to £0.65, using the usual maintenance estimate of 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). Most of the dogs this bag is meant for weigh a good deal less than that, and the label asks 105 to 165 grams for a dog between 5kg and 10kg.