Darf Complete Puppy review

This one takes our Excellent band, which is where cold-pressed puppy foods generally land. The itemised meat block, the organ share and the honest percentage against every entry are what lift it. Growth is where the stakes are highest in dog food, and a recipe that tells you precisely which animals are in it is worth a great deal to an owner starting a puppy off well.

The one figure that would round the picture out is a printed set of vitamin and mineral doses, which the label leaves out.

Ingredients, as declared: 60% meat (18% beef, 12% chicken necks, 9% lamb, 9% chicken, 3% goat, 3% beef heart, 3% beef lung, 3% beef liver), 15% dried carrot, 14% dried apple, 5% millet, 2% krill, 2% coconut oil, 1% nettle

Four land animals share the 60% meat block: beef at 18%, chicken necks at 12%, lamb at 9%, chicken at 9% and goat at 3%, with liver, lung and beef heart taking 3% apiece. Chicken necks are the bone entry, and in a puppy recipe bone does real structural work. Goat is an unusual sight on a British label and a genuinely lean red meat.

Organ meats are the quiet strength of this list. Few natural foods carry vitamin A, copper and the B group at the density liver does, and heart adds taurine on top. A young dog's diet has more to build than an adult's, and it counts for something that each of these is named and given a percentage.

Calcium converts to 1.03% of dry matter, which lands where a growing large-breed puppy needs it. Too little slows the skeleton and too much rushes it, and this figure sits comfortably in the window that suits a big frame growing at its own pace. It is one of the few numbers on a puppy label worth checking before anything else.

The plant fraction is dried carrot at 15%, dried apple at 14% and millet at 5%, and it leaves carbohydrate converting to 52.3% of dry matter against 41.4% for a typical cold-pressed puppy food. A pellet has to be held together by something, and here the carrot, the apple and the millet do that job. No wheat goes into it. Krill at 2%, coconut oil at 2% and nettle at 1% finish the recipe.

At 434 kcal per 100g this is a dense food, well above the 360 kcal typical of the category, which is exactly what a puppy putting on weight every week wants from a small stomach. Protein converts to 26.5% of dry matter and fat to 13.3%. The vitamins and minerals behind those figures are declared as an inclusion rather than itemised, so the doses are taken on the maker's word.

£5.61 a kilo, in a 4kg bag or a 14kg one.

A 10kg puppy in the four to twelve month stretch works out at roughly 163 to 200 grams a day, estimated from the food's energy content rather than read from a printed guide. Portions for a growing dog move month by month, so keep the scales out for a while.