WorkingHPRs Working Dog: Chicken & Rice Cube review

Lamb & Rice, Turkey & Rice and Large Breed Chicken & Rice all finish in our Good band, the same band the middle of the dry adult category occupies. Chicken & Rice Cube alone sits a step under, in our Average band. The gap is mostly about what these labels tell you. Poultry meal covers a whole family of birds and names none of them, the cube leaves moisture undeclared, and cereal carries a larger share here than in the brand's grain free lines. Dogs eating these recipes are generally dogs doing a job, and the feeding charts are written generously to match. Read the band as a comment on the label, not on the day your dog is having.

Ingredients, as declared: Rice (26%), Poultry Meal (26%), Barley, Oats, Poultry Fat, Sugar Beet Pulp, Fish Meal, Brewers Yeast, Minerals, Vitamins, Yucca Schidigera Extract

All four labels open the same way: a meat meal at 26%, rice at 26%, then barley and oats. The water has already been driven off a meat meal, so a 26% entry puts far more protein in the finished kibble than the same weight of a fresh entry would. The catch is what the meal gets called.

On Chicken & Rice Cube and Large Breed Chicken & Rice the entry is called poultry meal, and poultry covers goose, duck, turkey and chicken between them. So the bird named on the front is doing work the ingredients list does not confirm, and the same goes for the poultry fat in all four recipes. Lamb & Rice and Turkey & Rice do better on this, since they name lamb meal and turkey meal outright, though both still carry poultry fat lower down.

Rice, barley and oats are honest cereals. Cooked, all three digest easily and bring useful fibre and micronutrients, oats especially, with manganese, selenium and B1 among them. They do carry a lot of these bowls: estimated carbohydrate runs from 47.0% of dry matter in the large breed recipe up to 55.0% in the cube, against 46.2% typical for adult dry food.

The smaller entries repay a look. Beet pulp brings both soluble and insoluble fibre. For B vitamins, brewer's yeast is among the better natural sources, and it carries a complete spread of essential amino acids with it. Yucca schidigera extract on the cube and the lamb recipe is there for stool odour. Lamb & Rice adds lamb digest as a palatant, and Large Breed Chicken & Rice uses chicken hydrolysate for the same job, which at least names the bird the meal above it does not.

Two recipes bring something extra along. Large Breed Chicken & Rice carries glucosamine at 0.03%, methylsulfonylmethane at 0.03% and chondroitin sulphate at 0.02%, plus salmon oil for marine omega 3s. That salmon oil means it is not a fish free food, and nor is the cube, which lists fish meal. Turkey & Rice takes a different route with linseeds for plant omega 3s and seaweed for trace minerals, on the shortest ingredients list in the line.

Fat separates the four more than anything else does. Large Breed Chicken & Rice runs at 15.3% of dry matter, comfortably the richest, while the cube and Lamb & Rice sit at 9.2% and 9.3%, and Turkey & Rice at 10.9%. Where calcium is declared it runs from 1.64% to 2.19% of dry matter, and the cube declares none at all.

Rice at 26% opens this one, with poultry meal at 26% behind it and fish meal further down, so the chicken in the name is not confirmed anywhere on the ingredients list. No other label in the line leaves moisture undeclared. Its dry matter figures therefore rest on the standard 8% assumption, and its 319 kcal per 100g is an estimate. Of the four this has the least fat, at 9.2% of dry matter.

Per kilo it is £3.01 for Chicken & Rice Cube, £3.13 for Large Breed Chicken & Rice, £3.23 for Turkey & Rice and £3.31 for Lamb & Rice. All four come in 15kg bags.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, the maintenance need is about 840 kcal a day on the standard 110 × bodyweight^0.75 estimate. That means 263g of the cube at £0.79, 240g of the large breed recipe at £0.75, 255g of turkey at £0.82 and 267g of lamb at £0.88. A dog genuinely working will eat more than a maintenance sum suggests, and the labels' own charts are written with that in mind.