Burgess Supadog Finest Puppy review

Our Good band holds this one, level with a typical puppy kibble, with nutritional balance and transparency both reading Good and protein and processing held to Average. The reason is not hidden anywhere clever. Cereal opens and closes the ingredients list, and the named animal content is real but modest. The recipe leans on maize gluten and wheat feed in places where the better scoring growth foods lean on meat.

What it does have going for it is completeness and candour. The full analysis is printed, the additive panel is dosed line by line, and the 17% poultry meal is at least partly broken out as 15% chicken rather than left as a bare category. That is a plainer, more honest label than plenty of foods that read prettier on the front of the bag.

Ingredients, as declared: Wholegrain Wheat, Poultry Meal (17% inc Chicken 15%), Wholegrain Maize, Fish Meal, Dried Beet Pulp, Poultry Gravy, Poultry Fat, Maize Gluten Meal, Dried Egg, Whole Linseed, Minerals, Yeast (Brewer's Yeast and Grains), Wheat Feed.

Wholegrain wheat leading the list tells you the shape of this food straight away. Wheat is inexpensive, it binds a kibble beautifully and most dogs digest it perfectly well. It is also one of the more common intolerance triggers, so a pup who has already shown a reaction to wheat is not the pup for this bag. Wholegrain maize sits behind it doing similar work, and carbohydrate converts to an estimated 40.2% of dry matter, close to the 39.0% a typical puppy kibble runs at.

The animal content comes from three directions. Poultry meal at 17% is the largest single contributor, and the maker helpfully declares that 15% of the recipe is chicken within it, though the remainder stays under the group heading. Fish meal adds concentrated marine protein and the minerals that come with it, and dried egg is about as digestible a protein as a growing dog can be given. Poultry gravy and poultry fat handle palatability and energy.

Maize gluten meal is the entry worth understanding. A by product of maize processing, it is used to top up a food's protein figure at a lower outlay than meat. Its amino acid profile does not serve a dog as well as animal protein does. Wheat feed, right at the tail of the list, is the mill fraction of wheat and not the grain itself. Neither belongs in the recipe's credit column, and both are part of why the declared 29.0% protein reads less impressively than the number alone suggests.

There is genuine good work further down. Whole linseed brings plant omega 3 and soluble fibre, and brewer's yeast is one of the better natural sources of the B vitamins. Dried beet pulp gives the gentle, fermentable fibre that helps a puppy produce a firm stool. The additive panel is dosed properly too, with vitamins A, D3 and E each printed with a figure, a full trace element list behind them, and tocopherol antioxidants at 500 mg/kg.

Calcium converts to 2.17% of dry matter. The bag is listed for puppies of every size, toy through to giant. That makes calcium the figure to take seriously, because a large or giant breed pup grown on too much calcium is the classic rearing problem. A small or medium breed puppy regulates it far more easily, but a big breed owner should be working to a vet set portion rather than filling the bowl by eye.

The declared analysis is complete: protein 29.0%, fat 14.0%, fibre 3.0%, ash 9.0% and moisture 8.0%, with calcium alongside. Energy is the only line missing, and the 350 kcal per 100g figure is our own estimate.

Sold in a single 12.5kg bag.

No single daily number holds for a growing dog. Work from the bag's own chart instead, matched to the age of your pup and the adult size you expect, and revisit it as they fill out.