Carnilove Pate Pouches for Puppies review

These pouches place in our Excellent band, and so does the typical wet puppy food, which tells you how strong this part of the market is. Finishing clear of that middle mark in such company is the real compliment here. Nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding, with protein and processing at Excellent, and the short, meat-led list is exactly why.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey 44%, Salmon 26 %, broth, blueberries 4 %, linseed oil, pea flour, pea fibre.

Turkey at 44% and salmon at 26% are effectively the whole recipe. Both are named animals rather than legal categories, and between them they leave very little room for anything else, which is the shape a growing dog's food ought to have. Broth carries the moisture, and blueberries at 4% are the only fruit in the pouch.

There is a wrinkle in the printed analysis worth being straight about. Protein at 11.3%, fat at 11.3%, fibre at 3.5%, ash at 3.5% and moisture at 72.5% add up to more than the pouch itself. The as-fed figures are given exactly as the label declares them, but the converted dry matter column should be read as indicative only. The carbohydrate estimate lands at 0.0%. That follows from how those declared figures fall, and it is not a claim that the recipe contains no carbohydrate at all.

Taken at face value, the as-fed numbers still describe a rich, meaty pâté. For a wet food, fat at 11.3% is high, and it shows in the energy figure of 136 kcal per 100g against the 106 typical for a wet puppy food. These pouches go further per gram than most, so portions want measuring.

Calcium converts to 2.55% of dry matter. Growing bone gets through a lot of it, and a small or medium pup will make good use of that. The level does run above what large breed growth plans work to, and that is why the note above is there. For most puppies it is not a problem.

Linseed oil covers the plant side of the omega 3 while the salmon looks after the marine side, and pea flour and pea fibre are the only plant ingredients doing structural work. The additive panel is dosed in print, with taurine at 800 mg/kg, vitamin E at 67 mg/kg, zinc at 12 mg/kg and iron at 10 mg/kg among the figures. The thickener that gives the pâté its texture is cassia gum, listed among the technological additives.

£10.50 a kilo, sold as a 12 x 300g multipack.

Working from our standard energy estimate, a puppy of 10kg aged between 4 and 12 months would eat somewhere around 521 to 637 grams a day. A pouch food goes into the bowl in much bigger volumes than kibble does, so measure against the growth chart and against your pup's shape rather than against the number of pouches in the box.