Yarrah Sensitive review

This one lands in our Average band, with the middle of the adult dry category a step above it in Good. Read it as a food built around a narrow brief rather than a broad one. What holds it back is easy to see: rice takes two thirds of the recipe, so protein finishes at 24.1% of dry matter and fat at 10.7%, both on the gentle side. What lifts it is the honesty of the label, since every meaningful entry carries a percentage or a named source, and transparency reads Outstanding as a result. On a food bought for a delicate stomach, a short declared list is worth more than a long impressive one.

Ingredients, as declared: Paddy rice* (66.5%), dried chicken* (20%), rice protein*, chicken fat*, hydrolised liver*, minerals, MSC fish oil¹, seaweed*, spirulina*. * = organic. ¹From an MSC certified sustainable fishery, www.msc.org. 99.5% of agricultural resources is sourced from organic agriculture.

Paddy rice at 66.5% is the entire base of the food, and paddy rice means the grain with its husk still on, so it brings more fibre with it than polished white rice would. Crude fibre finishes at 7.5% of dry matter, high for a kibble, and that is a deliberate choice on a recipe built around digestion. Rice is also the usual choice of cereal when a dog's gut needs an easy ride.

The only meat is dried chicken at 20%, declared in its dried form so the figure means what it says on the bag. Chicken fat and hydrolysed liver follow, and protein settles at 24.1% of dry matter with fat at 10.7%. Neither figure is high, and on a food meant for a dog rebuilding its appetite and its routine, neither needs to be.

The tail is short and every entry has a job. MSC fish oil brings marine omega 3s, seaweed carries minerals with iodine among them, and spirulina is in as a dense green source of micronutrients. Nothing on this list is there for the photograph.

The honest gap for anyone running a formal elimination trial is that the liver is hydrolysed but not named to a species. The fish oil also puts a second animal into a recipe otherwise built on one. Hydrolysing breaks a protein into pieces small enough that most sensitive dogs handle it without noticing, so this matters for a strict trial rather than for everyday feeding.

Carbohydrate converts to 48.6% of dry matter, a little above the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. That is exactly what a two thirds rice recipe should look like. Calcium comes to 1.3% of dry matter. The vitamin and trace element entries are printed as bare numbers with no unit against them, so no dose can be read off them. That is the one place this otherwise plain spoken label goes quiet.

£8.52 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 10kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 280 grams a day on this food, which works out at £2.38 a day. That is on around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). For a 40kg dog Yarrah's own table asks 500 to 660 grams. If the two figures differ, your dog's waistline decides.