Calibra Life Junior Medium Breed review

Our reading puts this bag in the Excellent band, a step above where the middle of the puppy dry market sits, so read it as a strong mainstream growth kibble rather than a specialist one. Transparency lands on Outstanding and value on Excellent, with protein and processing and nutritional balance further down on Good, and that gap is easy to trace. Estimated carbohydrate comes out at 38.8% of dry matter, all but level with the 39.0% usual for the category, so the starch share is ordinary even where the meat headline is not.

Ingredients, as declared: chicken protein (42 %), rice (24 %), poultry fat (12 %, preserved with tocopherols), brewer´s rice, (7 %), hydrolysed poultry protein (5 %), apple pulp dried (3 %), yeasts, hydrolysed chicken liver (2 %), salmon oil (2 %), prebiotics (mannan-oligosaccharides 150 mg/kg, β-glucans 120 mg/kg, fructo-oligosaccharides 100 mg/kg), dried rosemary & thyme (250 mg/kg), Mojave yucca (100 mg/kg), Lactobacillus acidophilus HA - 122 inactivated (15 × 109 cells/kg).

Chicken protein at 42% is a dried, concentrated meat, not a fresh one, and that changes how you should read the number. Fresh meat still has its water when it is weighed, and it shrinks away in the oven. A dried protein has already given that water up. This 42%, then, survives into the kibble close to as printed. Protein converts to 31.9% of dry matter.

The binding comes from rice at 24%, with brewer's rice at 7% alongside. Brewer's rice is the smaller broken grain left behind by milling, nutritionally much the same as the whole thing and easy on most puppy digestions. Between the two entries the estimated carbohydrate settles at 38.8% of dry matter.

The fats come from poultry fat at 12%, held stable with tocopherols, with salmon oil at 2% on top. Together they take fat to 19.8% of dry matter and energy to 398 kcal per 100g, a rich enough bowl for a pup laying down frame week by week. The salmon oil is what supplies the long chain omega 3s.

The small print is the part of this label most worth reading. Mannan-oligosaccharides at 150 mg/kg, beta glucans at 120 mg/kg and fructo-oligosaccharides at 100 mg/kg each carry a weight you can check. An inactivated Lactobacillus acidophilus culture comes next, with dried rosemary and thyme at 250 mg/kg and Mojave yucca at 100 mg/kg. The gentle fibre is dried apple pulp at 3%. Every vitamin and trace mineral carries a figure beside it.

Calcium is declared and converts to 1.43% of dry matter, which is where a growth recipe wants to be, while ash at 6.4% of dry matter says the mineral load as a whole stays moderate. Getting calcium wrong is the classic error in rearing a pup, so a printed, in range figure tells you more than anything on the front of the bag.

The one place the label holds back is its poultry. The fat at 12% and the hydrolysed poultry protein at 5% name no species, and hydrolysed chicken liver at 2% sits there as a palatant. Bird is in the bowl in more forms than the headline suggests. For most pups that is trivia. For one being worked carefully through an elimination diet, it is the line that decides the matter.

£3.96 a kilo, sold in 100g, 2.5kg and 12kg bags.

A growing dog has no single daily number on this food. The ration climbs as your pup does, then eases back once the frame is finished. Use the bag's chart for the weight, and let your pup's own shape have the final word.