Calibra Dog Life Pouch Pup&Jnr Chicken 10x150g review

This pouch reaches our Excellent band, and so does the middle of the puppy wet field, which is a demanding place to stay competitive. It finishes above that middle mark all the same, reading Outstanding for both nutritional balance and transparency and Good for protein and processing.

The construction explains the result. There is one named meat at 70%, a starch share small enough to be almost beside the point, and a declared calcium figure doing the job that most puppy labels leave to trust.

Ingredients, as declared: chicken 70 %, brown rice 4 %, minerals, dried brewer´s yeast 0.2 %, lineseed oil 0.2 %, powdered beetroot juice, Mojave yucca 0.02 %.

Chicken at 70% heads a list of seven, so the recipe has nowhere to hide. Protein converts to 47.5% of dry matter and fat to 32.5%, the shape of a food made almost entirely of meat once its water is taken out of the sum.

Chicken is the most used meat in dog food for sound reasons. It is easy to digest, kind on the palate and an excellent source of protein. Because so many dogs have met chicken, more have reacted to it than to any other meat. For most pups that makes it the natural first choice, and for a few a considered one.

There is one cereal, brown rice at 4%, and it is the only real source of starch. Carbohydrate estimates at 5.5% of dry matter against 13.6% for the typical puppy wet food. The rice is doing a carrier's job and nothing more. The recipe is therefore not grain free.

Linseed oil at 0.2% brings plant-sourced omega 3 for skin and coat, and dried brewer's yeast at the same share adds B vitamins. Powdered beetroot juice and Mojave yucca at 0.02% finish things off, small inclusions rather than active ones, with the yucca traditionally there to keep the garden tidier.

The mineral declaration is the part that makes this a proper growth food rather than a pleasant one. Ash converts to 10.0% of dry matter and calcium to 1.5%, inside the range a young skeleton works to, and vitamin D3 at 225 IU per kilo governs how well that calcium gets used. Vitamin E at 40 mg per kilo joins zinc, manganese, copper and iodine to complete a modest but printed panel.

Sold as ten 150g pouches to a pack.

No single daily figure will hold for long while a dog is growing. The requirement rises through the first months and then eases as the adult frame arrives, so read the growth chart and your pup's waistline together. For scale, our energy estimate has a 20kg pup aged four to twelve months eating somewhere near 1257 to 1536 grams a day.