Brit Care Mini Grain Free Puppy review

This recipe reaches our Excellent band, a step above the Good band the typical puppy dry food occupies. The analysis explains the climb: plenty of lamb, plenty of energy, and less starch than almost anything else on the growth shelf.

Transparency reads Outstanding, with nutritional balance and value both Excellent and protein and processing Good. The mineral content is on the generous side, which is worth reading alongside the small breed labelling rather than against it.

Ingredients, as declared: lamb meat meal (35%), fresh lamb protein (20%), yellow pea, chicken fat (preserved with tocopherols), chickpeas, linseed (5%), salmon oil (3%), buckwheat, dried apples, brewer´s yeast, algae (0.5%, Ascophyllum nodosum), hydrolyzed crustacean shells (a source of glucosamine, 290 mg/kg), blueberries (250 mg/kg, a source of polyphenols 75 mg/kg & flavonoids 35 mg/kg), cartilage extract (a source of chondroitin, 180 mg/kg), mannan-oligosaccharides (170 mg/kg), herbs & fruits (rosemary, cloves, citrus, curcuma, 160 mg/kg), fructo-oligosaccharides (110 mg/kg), yucca schidigera (110 mg/kg), inulin (100 mg/kg), milk thistle (80 mg/kg), sea buckthorn (80 mg/kg), chamomile (35 mg/kg), cloves (35 mg/kg), sage (30 mg/kg)

The two lamb entries do different jobs. Lamb meat meal at 35% is dried and rendered, its water long gone, so that share carries into the kibble close to as printed. Fresh lamb protein at 20% brings the palatability that gets a small, fussy pup eating. Together they account for 55% of the label, and protein converts to 36.7% of dry matter.

The starch is entirely cereal free. Yellow pea and chickpeas do the structural work, with buckwheat behind them. Buckwheat is a seed and no kind of grain, whatever the name suggests. Carbohydrate comes out at 24.0% as fed, or 26.6% of dry matter, well below the 39.0% a puppy dry food usually carries, and the space that leaves has gone to meat and fat.

Fat runs to 23.0%, or 25.6% of dry matter, with chicken fat carrying most of it and linseed at 5% plus salmon oil at 3% supplying the omega 3 side. That is a genuinely rich mix, well matched to a small pup burning energy faster than they can eat it, and it is why the energy figure reaches 420 kcal per 100g.

Calcium is declared at 1.78% of dry matter with ash at 8.5%, a mineral load on the generous side. For the small breed pups this food is sold to, that is a workable growth figure. Read the mini on the front as a real instruction, not a kibble size: with a pup that will finish large, the level runs above what big frame growth plans aim at.

The functional tail is unusually specific about where things come from. Glucosamine arrives at 290 mg/kg from hydrolysed crustacean shells and chondroitin at 180 mg/kg from cartilage extract, with mannan-oligosaccharides at 170 mg/kg, fructo-oligosaccharides at 110 mg/kg and inulin at 100 mg/kg on the gut side. Algae at 0.5% brings trace minerals from the sea. Blueberries at 250 mg/kg, with polyphenols at 75 mg/kg and flavonoids at 35 mg/kg, sit alongside herbs from rosemary to sage at trace level, and that closing run is seasoning.

The added panel names vitamins A, D3, E and C, biotin and the B group, choline and taurine. Zinc comes at 110 mg, iron at 90 mg, manganese at 45 mg and copper at 18 mg, with iodine and selenium behind them.

£5.71 a kilo, in 0.4kg, 2kg and 7kg bags.

Small breed growth is quick and soon over, so the amount on the chart today will not be the amount in a month, and the ribs make a better guide than habit does.