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Merrick Grain Free Lamb & Sweet Potato Dry Dog Food package official product image via Amazon

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Grain Free Lamb & Sweet Potato Dry Dog Food

Dry food · adult dogs · distributed by Merrick Pet Care

A formulated-to-meet, deboned-first dry food that's cheaper per calorie than 10% of the dry foods we've priced and denser than 56% (you feed fewer cups) — $3.51 a day for your 40-lb adult dog.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-07-12

$23.98 · 4 lb $3.51/day as of 2026-07-12 Check price →
Tell us about your dogevery number on this page updates live ↓
40 lb
For a 40-lb adult: 2½ cupsper day $3.51per day 6 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 № MERRIC
verified 2026-07-12

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Moisture hides the real recipe: kibble is ~10% water, canned food ~78%. Removing water puts every food on one scale, so these are the only nutrition numbers that can be compared across foods. As-fed label values shown small.
Protein 33.7%label: 30% min higher than 79% of dry foods
Fat 19.1%label: 17% min higher than 85% of dry foods
Fiber 5.1%label: 4.5% max typical — the median dry food is 5.4%
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate ≈33.1%computed anchor available once more brands disclose ash
Calcium / Phosphorus extended guarantees: Ω-3 0.3% Not yet verifiedcalcium/phosphorus no ratio to anchor

Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog

Calorie density 393 kcal/cup3705 kcal/kg typical — the median dry food is 388 (median 388) — you feed fewer cups
Daily serving2½ cups
Cost per day$3.51
4-lb bag lasts6 days

Cost per 1,000 kcal: $3.57 — cheaper than 10% 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 kinds of AAFCO claims exist. Most foods are only "formulated to meet" nutrient profiles — a paper calculation. A smaller set carry the stronger claim: fed to real dogs in AAFCO-procedure trials ("Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate…").
 Formulated to meet · maintenance
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Deboned Lamb · Chicken Meal · Turkey Meal · Sweet Potatoes · Potatoes
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyYes
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)1 (peas)
BHA / BHT preservativesNone on label
Carrageenan (thickener)None
Ethoxyquin
why unknown
When a fish-meal supplier adds ethoxyquin, U.S. rules don't require it on the finished label — so no label can prove its absence for recipes containing fish meal. We report this as a gap rather than guessing.
 Can't be determined from label

Safety

FDA recalls — Merrick, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerMerrick Pet Care, Hereford, TX 79045
Label transparency 10 of 15 standard fields
Green = verified favorable · amber = gap in the record · red = verified unfavorable · gray = not disclosed / neutral fact.
Source: official label source (official)· price: Amazon, 2026-07-12 · 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 on the Verified Label is computed from this list. Ingredients are ordered by pre-cooking weight — the first five carry the most information.

Deboned Lamb, Chicken Meal, Turkey Meal, Sweet Potatoes, Potatoes, Peas, Chicken Fat, Natural Flavor, Whitefish Meal, Flaxseed, Dried Yeast, Potassium Chloride, Salt, Choline Chloride, Apples, Blueberries, Salmon Oil, Minerals (Zinc Amino Acid Complex, Iron Amino Acid Complex, Sodium Selenite, Manganese Amino Acid Complex, Copper Amino Acid Complex, Calcium Iodate), DL-Methionine, Taurine, Vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Vitamin A Supplement, Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin Supplement, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Folic Acid, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex, Biotin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Vitamin D3 Supplement), Mixed Tocopherols for freshness

Wet ingredients like fresh deboned lamb 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.

Acana Free-Run Poultry Recipe
33.0% protein (DM)$2.03 / 1,000 kcal43% less per 1,000 kcal
Fromm Four-Star Beef Frittata Veg® Recipe Dry Dog Food
33.3% protein (DM)$2.54 / 1,000 kcal29% less per 1,000 kcal
Purina Pro Plan Small Breed Shredded Blend Beef & Rice Formula Dog Foodsame maker family
33.0% protein (DM)$1.81 / 1,000 kcal49% 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 four 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 Owns its plants

Merrick owns and operates its own dry plant and wet cannery in Hereford, Texas.

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Undisclosed

Merrick's parent Nestlé Purina PetCare employs a board-certified veterinary nutritionist (Arleigh Reynolds, DVM), but Merrick operates as an independent business and no fetched source names a board-certified veterinary nutritionist or PhD animal nutritionist on Merrick's own staff, so value is null.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 123 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.

Peer-reviewed research Unmeasurable

Count of PubMed-indexed records with the entity in an author affiliation (animal/pet-domain filtered). A reproducible FLOOR, not a total: affiliation strings vary and some research is published under institute names. research_entity_affiliation is recorded only for manufacturers with a dedicated pet-nutrition research arm; brand_affiliation.count is null where the brand name is an ambiguous homonym.

Parent company Nestlé Purina PetCare ↗ Founded 1988 ↗ Headquarters / plant Hereford, Texas, USA ↗ FDA recalls on record None on record

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