Denes Puppy Tins review

Denes Puppy Tins settle in our Good band. Wet puppy food is a strong category as a whole, and the typical tin or tray sits a band above in Excellent. This recipe keeps company with a demanding field and holds a respectable place in it. Nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding, with protein and processing settling at Average.

What lifts it is a genuinely meat shaped dry matter profile from a very short recipe. What holds it back is how little the label declares: no calcium line, a brief additive panel and an energy figure we have had to estimate rather than read.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 31%, pork 14%, wheat, carrots, minerals, herbs (kelp, garlic and parsley), seaweed.

Chicken at 31% and pork at 14% give the tin 45% named meat between them, a solid share for a wet food and, more to the point, a named one. Of the two, pork is the one to look at twice. It turns up in relatively few dog foods, and it is often the meat an owner reaches for when they want something their pup has never met before.

Behind the meat the composition is unusually brief: wheat, carrots, minerals, herbs listed as kelp, garlic and parsley, then seaweed. The wheat is doing the binding and is the one entry to think about, being the grain most often at the root of a sensitivity. Carrots bring vitamin A and soluble fibre, while the kelp and seaweed are there for trace minerals, iodine among them.

The dry matter figures are what make this tin interesting. Strip out the declared 78.0% moisture and protein reads 43.2% with fat at 36.4%, a profile the meat has shaped. Carbohydrate estimates at 6.8% of dry matter, where a wet puppy food usually carries 13.6%. Fibre is light at 4.5% of dry matter, which most young digestions take in their stride.

The mineral and vitamin side is where the label goes quiet. Ash converts to 9.1% of dry matter, and the declared additives amount to vitamins A, D3 and E plus copper at 4.6mg/kg, which is a short panel by the standards of wet food. No calcium is stated, and a growth food carrying no breed size restriction is precisely where you would most want that figure printed.

Energy is our estimate rather than a declaration, at 106 kcal per 100g, which happens to land right on the typical for a wet puppy food. A wet meal is a bigger volume than a kibble one, so the tin count adds up faster than a scoop does.

Each can is 400g, and a case holds 12 of them.

Growing puppies eat to a schedule that keeps changing, so lean on the tin's guide for your pup's weight and stage, then trim or top up according to how they are looking and feeling.