Home / Dog food / Kirkland Signature / Kirkland Signature Adult Formula Chicken, Rice and Vegetable Dog Food

Kirkland Signature Adult Formula Chicken, Rice and Vegetable Dog Food package official product image via Amazon

Kirkland Signature · brand facts & recall history →

Kirkland Signature Adult Formula Chicken, Rice and Vegetable Dog Food

Dry food · adult dogs

A formulated-to-meet, chicken-first dry food that's cheaper per calorie than 88% of the dry foods we've priced — $1.16 a day for your 40-lb adult dog.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-10-18

$79.99 · 40 lb $1.16/day as of 2026-10-18 Check price →
Tell us about your dogevery number on this page updates live ↓
40 lb
For a 40-lb adult: $1.16per day 69 daysbag lasts passes 2 fit checks ↓

Joint, kidney, dental or heart concerns? Labels can't honestly answer those — that's vet territory. Why we don't checkmark them →

The evidence

The Verified Label

Every food on this site gets this exact panel — same fields, same order, sourced from the official label — so brands finally become comparable. Dots show where this food sits among all 494 dry foods we've verified.

Verified LabelThe standardized pet-food panel
VPFD № KIRKLA
verified 2026-10-18

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Kibble is ~10% water, canned food ~78%, so as-fed numbers are on two different scales. As-fed values shown small. How the conversion works →
Protein 28.9%label: 26% min typical — the median dry food is 30%
Fat 17.8%label: 16% min higher than 70% of dry foods
Fiber 4.4%label: 4% max lower than 69% of dry foods
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate ≈40%computed anchor available once more brands disclose ash
Calcium / Phosphorus extended guarantees: none verified yet Not yet verifiedcalcium/phosphorus no ratio to anchor

Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog

Calorie density 3754 kcal/kgper-serving value not disclosed no corpus anchor — value not yet verified
Daily serving—
Cost per day$1.16
40-lb bag lasts69 days

Cost per 1,000 kcal: $1.17 — cheaper than 88% of the 360 dry foods we've priced (median $1.93). Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.

Standards & ingredients

AAFCO statement
what this means
Two claims exist: formulated to meet a profile, or fed to real dogs in an AAFCO trial. Which is stronger, and how rare it is →
Formulated to meet · maintenance
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Chicken · chicken meal · whole grain brown rice · cracked pearled barley · chicken fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols)
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyYes
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)None
BHA / BHT preservativesNone on label
Carrageenan (thickener)None
Ethoxyquin
why unknown
A preservative added by a fish-meal supplier need not appear on the finished label, so no label can prove its absence. Why we show gaps →
Can't be determined from label

Safety

FDA recalls — Kirkland Signature, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 7 of 15 standard fields
Green = verified favorable · amber = gap in the record · red = verified unfavorable · gray = not disclosed / neutral fact.
Source: official label source (secondary)· price: Amazon, 2026-10-18 · anchors: 494 verified dry dog foods (360 priced) · how to read this label

The fit

For your dog, specifically

Checked for a 40-lb adult with a sensitive stomach — the same published criteria our finder uses. Change your dog above and these update.

✓
Validated for adult dogsAAFCO statement covers adult maintenance.
✓
Passes our sensitive-stomach checksNamed animal protein first, and no unnamed by-products in the ingredient list.
·
Contains chickenNot selected as a concern for your dog — shown here for reference.

The source material

The full ingredient list

Every flag above is computed from this list. Why order is by pre-cooking weight, and how splitting bends it →

Chicken, chicken meal, whole grain brown rice, cracked pearled barley, chicken fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols), egg product, dried beet pulp, potato, fish meal, flaxseed, natural flavor, dried yeast, millet, potassium chloride, salt, choline chloride, carrot, pea, dried kelp, apple, cranberry, rosemary extract, parsley flakes, dried chicory root, glucosamine hydrochloride, dried lactobacillus plantarum fermentation product, dried bacillus subtilis fermentation product, dried lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation product, dried enterococcus faecium fermentation product, dried bifidobacterium animalis fermentation product, vitamin E supplement, iron proteinate, zinc proteinate, copper proteinate, ferrous sulfate, zinc sulfate, manganese sulfate, copper sulfate, potassium iodide, thiamine mononitrate, manganese proteinate, chondroitin sulfate, ascorbic acid, vitamin A supplement, biotin, niacin, calcium pantothenate, sodium selenite, pyridoxine hydrochloride, vitamin B12 supplement, riboflavin, vitamin D supplement, folic acid

11 ingredients in this list are ones we hold sourced evidence on , and 2 of them are genuinely contested rather than merely unpopular online.

  • Potato · ingredient 8ContestedA starchy tuber used as the carbohydrate base in many grain-free foods (it is a vegetable, not a cereal grain). The FDA's open 2018 investigation into diet-associated canine DCM listed potatoes 'in various forms' as main ingredients of interest alongside pulses such as peas and lentils.
  • Peas · ingredient 18ContestedA pulse (legume) used in many grain-free foods as a plant protein and carbohydrate source. Peas are central to an open FDA investigation, begun in July 2018, into a possible link between diets high in peas, other pulses, and potatoes and canine dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM); 93% of reported products contained peas and/or lentils.
  • Named Meat/Poultry Meal (e.g., Chicken Meal, Lamb Meal) · ingredient 2Well supportedA rendered, water- and fat-reduced concentrate from a named species (AAFCO, e.g., 'chicken meal'). Because most moisture is removed it is a dense protein source (poultry meals commonly around 57-69% crude protein) and it names the species for allergy avoidance.
  • Mixed tocopherols (natural vitamin E) · ingredient 5Well supportedA blend of vitamin E forms (alpha-, beta-, gamma-, delta-tocopherol) used as a natural-source antioxidant to slow fat rancidity, commonly chosen as an alternative to synthetic preservatives. EFSA concluded that tocopherol-rich extracts are safe for all animal species and the consumer and are efficacious antioxidants in feed.
  • Beet Pulp · ingredient 7Well supportedThe fibrous material left after sugar is extracted from sugar beets, included as a moderately fermentable fiber source (commonly around 5 to 7.5% of the diet). Controlled feeding studies show it supports firm, good-quality stools and short-chain fatty acid production without impairing overall nutrient digestibility, so the 'cheap filler' characterization is not supported by the evidence.
  • Rosemary extract · ingredient 22Well supportedA plant-derived natural antioxidant (active compounds carnosic acid and carnosol) used to slow fat oxidation, frequently chosen as an alternative to synthetic preservatives. It is an authorized food antioxidant in the EU (E 392); JECFA established a temporary acceptable daily intake for rosemary extract expressed as carnosic acid plus carnosol.

Wet ingredients like fresh chicken shrink once cooked — which is why named meals appearing high on the list matter: they keep meaningful animal protein after moisture is removed.

Nutritional twins

Cheaper close matches

Verified foods with a closely matching label at a meaningfully lower cost per 1,000 kcal.

29.5% protein (DM)$0.86 / 1,000 kcal27% less per 1,000 kcal
Diamond Premiumsame maker family
28.9% protein (DM)$0.67 / 1,000 kcal43% less per 1,000 kcal
28.6% protein (DM)$0.85 / 1,000 kcal28% less per 1,000 kcal

Label-composition matches only: same species, form, and growth stage; same primary protein where both are known; grain-free preserved; protein within 4 points and fat within 4 points, and estimated carbs within 8 points, on a dry-matter basis. Not a medical or quality recommendation.

The maker

Who makes this — and how they back it up

The five questions the WSAVA nutrition guidelines tell you to ask a pet-food company. Every answer is sourced or marked as an undisclosed gap — never guessed. This is the "is it made competently?" axis that star-rating sites skip.

Owns its manufacturing Co-packed

Private label: Costco owns the label but no plants; Kirkland Signature dog food is co-manufactured by Diamond Pet Foods (corroborated by dogfoodadvisor.com, which states 'Kirkland Signature pet food is made by Diamond Pet Foods').

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Undisclosed

We could not confirm this from a public source.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 3 labels we’ve verified for this brand, and no company-wide claim was found either. Most pet foods are only "formulated to meet" AAFCO profiles (a paper calculation) rather than fed to real animals in trials — this is common, not necessarily a red flag.

Publishes quality-control testing Not found

Label owner (retailer private label) publishes no QC process that we found. The maker is named as Diamond Pet Foods only by third-party sources, so Diamond's QC page is not credited to this label.

Peer-reviewed research None found

PubMed lists no animal or pet paper with Costco (label owner) in an author address. Not proof no research exists — only that none is indexed under that company name.

source →
Parent company Costco Wholesale Corporation ↗ FDA recalls on record 2 on record

Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Kirkland Signature brand page →