The first very important note regarding the Skinners "Chicken and Rice" is that it is really "Maize and Chicken" with some rice so this can be a bit misleading.
Ingredients: Maize, chicken meat meal (17.5% min), whole rice (15% min), oats, poultry fat, white fish meal, vitamins and minerals, brewer’s yeast, culinary herb mix.
Feeding Guide: The Skinners' guide for our imaginary 20Kg Adult dog is 260g per day.
Costings and Comparisons
On 10th September 2011 the price was 48.99€ for a 15Kg bag
The daily feeding cost for giving our 20Kg dog 260g of this Skinners food works out at 0,85€
To feed the nearest equivalent Hypoallergenic Burns Chicken and Maize would be 0,79€ a day (the Burns guide is only 200g per day) or, for a product with more digestible Rice instead of Maize, the Natural Dog Food Chicken & Rice (27% Chicken Meat Meal) only 0,81€ per day.
A 15Kg bag of Skinners would last the 20Kg dog 58 days but a 15Kg bag of Burns, Natural Dog Food, Fish 4 Dogs or Applaws would last around 70-75 days!!! The higher nutritional values of our 4 listed foods account for the lower feeding quantities.
Star Rating: 2 star
Closing Notes
The inclusion of "poultry fat" rather than a named source of fat and the mixture of cereals (maize, rice and oats) could make it difficult to identify a source of intolerance to one or other of the possible ingredients. Poultry fat is a really low quality ingredient produced by forcing left over pieces of carcass from any type of poultry (chicken, turkey, goose, duck, osterich ...) through a very fine mesh at very high pressure - it not only looks awful .... but then it's a cheap ingredient.
Whilst the product states that it includes Glucosamine and Chondroitin these are expensive ingredients and the amounts included are unlikely to be sufficient to have any theraputic effect on dogs that have joint problems.