Cobbydog Premium Puppy review

This recipe reads in our Good band, level with the typical puppy dry food. Nutritional balance reads Good and transparency Excellent, and the analysis is perfectly respectable, with protein converting to 31.5% of dry matter and fat to 18.5%. It is protein and processing reading Average that sets the level: poultry that names no bird, maize gluten meal used to lift the protein figure, and a growth label printing neither moisture nor calcium. None of that makes it a bad meal for a puppy, but it does leave more of the checking to the owner than a fuller label would.

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry Meal (28.0%), White Rice (26.0%), Whole Maize, Poultry Oil, Maize Gluten Meal, Sugar Beet Pellets, Fish Meal, Whole Linseed, Brewers Yeast, Extract of Yucca Schidigera, Salmon Oil, Chicory Root Extract (as a source of Prebiotic FOS) (0.3%). Additives: Antioxidants.

Poultry meal at 28.0% is the biggest entry and the backbone of the recipe. Meal has had its water driven off before it goes in, so close to that whole share survives into the finished kibble. The meal itself is fine. The limitation is the word poultry, since it covers any domestic bird and can change between production runs.

White rice at 26.0% is the main grain, backed by whole maize and sugar beet pellets. Carbohydrate works out at an estimated 41.3% of dry matter against the 39.0% typical for puppy kibble, so the starch side is a shade fuller than average. The fibre reading of 2.2% of dry matter is on the light side.

The entry worth understanding here is maize gluten meal. It is a plant protein, and its job on this label is to raise the total protein figure. The number it produces is real, but plant protein does not carry the amino acid balance a growing dog draws from meat. It sits behind the poultry meal and the rice here, so read the 29.0% protein as coming from more than one kind of source.

The fats and the extras are the better half of the list. Poultry oil provides the energy, fish meal and salmon oil bring marine omega 3, whole linseed adds the plant version, and brewers yeast contributes B vitamins with a flavour dogs take to. Chicory root extract at 0.3% is named specifically as a source of prebiotic FOS, which is a tidier declaration than a bare prebiotic mention, and yucca schidigera extract closes things off.

The analysis is where this label runs short for a growth food. Ash is declared at 6.0%, a lighter mineral load than many puppy kibbles carry. No calcium figure is printed to go with it, so there is no way to read the growth level from the panel at all. Moisture is missing as well, which means the dry matter conversions here are built on the standard 8% assumption rather than a declared number. The added panel is dosed in print. Vitamin E comes in at 110 mg, zinc oxide at 100 mg, iron at 60 mg and manganese at 25 mg. Copper is at 5.00 mg, calcium iodate at 1.00 mg and sodium selenite at 0.15 mg per kilo.

£4.14 a kilo, sold in 3kg and 10kg bags.

A puppy's portion is a week-by-week judgement rather than a fixed scoop, because age and expected adult size both move it. The bag's own guide stretches from 25g a day for the smallest pups to 940g for those growing towards the very top of its chart. Where your pup sits in that spread is a question for your hands over their ribs as much as for the table.