Ava Sensitive Skin and Stomach Puppy: White Fish review

This bag settles into our Good band, level with where the puppy dry field typically comes to rest. Three of its pillars read Good, with transparency well clear of them at Outstanding, so the label holds up wherever you press on it. The fish and sweet potato construction is doing most of that work.

The two gaps stopping it making more of the recipe underneath are both about what is not printed. Without a calcium declaration and without a moisture figure, part of the assessment has to be estimated, and an estimate can never carry the weight of a number the maker has committed to.

Ingredients, as declared: Fish (38.5%) (White Fish Meal 19%, White Fish 17%, Fish Stock 2.5%), Sweet Potato (32%), Beet Pulp (4%), Chicken Fat, Potato Protein, Brewers' Yeast, Salmon Oil, Minerals, Chicory Root Extract (as a source of Prebiotic Fructooligosaccharide) (0.16%), Yeasts (as a source of Beta-glucans and Prebiotic Mannanoligosaccharide) (0.11%), Yucca Extract (0.02%), Glucosamine (0.02%), Chondroitin (0.015%), Cranberry Extract (0.01%), Green Tea Extract (0.005%), Pomegranate Extract (0.005%)

Three forms of fish add up to 38.5%: 19% white fish meal, 17% white fish and 2.5% fish stock. The meal is the part that carries, since drying has already taken its water out, while the fresh fish loses much of its weight in cooking and the stock is there for appeal. Protein comes back at 30.0% as fed and an estimated 32.6% of dry matter, a solid figure for growth.

Sweet potato at 32% is the entire starch story, which is unusual and rather welcome on a sensitive recipe. Cereal is absent from the list entirely, and a single carbohydrate source gives you one thing to point at if your pup does not get on with the food. Carbohydrate works out at an estimated 36.9% of dry matter against the 39.0% typical for a puppy dry food. Beet pulp at 4% lifts crude fibre to 3.5%, on the generous side for a young digestion.

The fats are chosen with skin in mind. Salmon oil supplies the marine omega 3 that a coat and a growing brain both draw on, and chicken fat provides the bulk of the energy at 17.0% declared fat. Chicken fat is a refined ingredient that carries very little protein with it, so it rarely troubles a dog with a poultry sensitivity. It does name chicken though, and a strict exclusion trial has to account for that.

Behind the fish sits potato protein, a by-product of potato processing used to lift the protein total at less outlay than meat. It is perfectly digestible, but plant protein does not bring the amino acid profile that fish does. Read the headline protein figure with that in mind, since not every point of it came from the sea.

The functional tail is short and precise. Yeasts at 0.11% carry the beta-glucans and mannanoligosaccharides, chicory root extract at 0.16% the prebiotic fructooligosaccharide, and brewers yeast sits alongside. Finishing the list are yucca extract at 0.02%, glucosamine at 0.02%, chondroitin at 0.015%, cranberry at 0.01%, then green tea and pomegranate at 0.005% each.

The declared analysis stops at protein, fat, fibre and ash, so both the moisture and the calcium lines are missing, and the dry matter column has to assume the standard 8% moisture. The trace element panel is fully dosed by contrast, with zinc at 64.2mg, manganese at 7.8mg, copper at 8mg and iodine at 1.27mg alongside named vitamins. The maker is clearly willing to print numbers when it chooses to.

£6.84 a kilo, sold in a 2kg bag.

There is no single daily amount for a puppy, since the right ration shifts with every month and with the size they are heading for. Follow the chart on the pack and let their condition guide the fine tuning.