Benevo Puppy Original review

A meat-free recipe is read here on exactly the same scale as everything else, and this one settles in our Average band, one step below the Good a typical growth kibble occupies. The pillars part company: transparency reads Outstanding, while nutritional balance reads Average and protein and processing Poor. The protein is chiefly what keeps it there: soya carries the bulk of the 26.0% figure, and a growing dog converts plant protein less efficiently than the animal kind. The list prints almost no inclusion percentages, so the balance behind the leading ingredient stays hidden. What holds it up is the part that matters most in a growth food. Calcium is declared and sits where it should, energy is a printed figure, and the supplement panel names and doses the specific nutrients a plant-based diet has to get right.

Ingredients, as declared: Soya, Canola Oil, White Rice, Maize, Peas, Dried Beet Pulp, Minerals, Brewer's Yeast, Tomato Pomace, Vegetable Stock, Flax Seed, Dried Chicory (0.5%, a natural source of FOS and inulin), Dried Algae, Yucca Schidigera.

Soya is the foundation of the recipe and the reason it works at all without meat. It is one of the few plant ingredients with a protein profile broad enough to build a complete food on. The proteins in it are less available to a dog than those in meat, and soya is also among the plants most often linked with sensitivities. The declared analysis lands at 26.0% protein, 28.6% of dry matter, which is a workable growth figure with that caveat attached.

DL-methionine, dosed more heavily than anything else on the added panel, is the entry that shows the recipe has been thought through. Methionine is the amino acid plant proteins tend to be shortest of. Adding it in a measured dose is how a meat-free diet closes that gap. Taurine at 1,500 mg and L-carnitine at 250 mg follow the same logic, since both come readily from meat and need supplying directly when there is none.

White rice, maize and peas provide the starch, with carbohydrate reading 36.5% as fed and 40.1% of dry matter, a whisker above the 39.0% typical for a puppy kibble. Peas bring more than starch alone, adding fibre and a spread of micronutrients, while maize is the entry a sensitive pup is most likely to notice.

Fat comes from canola oil at 15.0% of the analysis, 16.5% of dry matter, with flax seed alongside it. Both supply the shorter chain plant omega 3, which a dog converts only partly into the long chain forms a growing brain and retina use. That is what the dried algae further down the list is there for, since algae supplies those longer chain fats directly.

The fibre side is more generous than most growth foods, at 4.5% crude fibre, 4.9% of dry matter, from dried beet pulp and peas. The label names dried chicory at 0.5% as a natural source of FOS and inulin, food for the gut's useful bacteria. Tomato pomace and yucca schidigera round out the plant list.

Minerals are well covered, with ash at 9.0%, 9.9% of dry matter, and calcium converting to 1.32% of dry matter, inside the range growth works to across every size the bag is listed for. Brewer's yeast adds natural B vitamins and a useful spread of amino acids on top of the added panel.

That added panel is dosed in full, with vitamins A and D3 both carrying figures and vitamin E at 130 IU. Alongside them are zinc at 80 mg, iron at 50 mg, manganese at 50 mg, copper at 10 mg, iodine at 1.5 mg and selenium at 0.2 mg. The label prints its energy figure, 365 kcal per 100g, and plenty of labels do not.

£6.90 a kilo, sold in 1.8kg and 10kg bags.

Nothing about a puppy's intake stays still for long, so start from the guide printed for their age and expected adult size, then keep adjusting in small steps as they grow into it.