Dr Clauders Best Choice Junior: Mini review

This kibble comes to rest in our Average band, one below the Good band where the middle of the puppy dry market sits, with transparency reading Excellent, nutritional balance Good, and protein and processing Average. The reasons are readable straight off the list. Rice at 36% sits ahead of the meat, protein reaches 29.3% of dry matter, which is modest for a growing dog, and two ingredients name a category instead of an animal. Set against that, the declared calcium and the depth of the vitamin panel are real strengths, and they are a large part of why the food sits where it does rather than lower.

Ingredients, as declared: 36% rice, 22% salmon protein (dried), poultry fat, maize, maize protein, beet pulp, protein hydrolysate, linseed, 1% chicory powder, yeast, cellulose, whole egg powder, monocalcium phosphate, potassium chloride.

Rice at 36% opens the recipe, and rice is a fair choice of starch in itself: it is gentle on a young digestion and rarely the culprit when a pup is unsettled. Read its position too. This kibble is built on its cereal first and its meat second, and no other line on the list tells you more.

No other meat is named on this label beyond dried salmon protein at 22%. Being dried, it carries its protein into the finished kibble almost as printed. Two other entries complicate an exclusion diet. Poultry fat and protein hydrolysate each name a category where a species should be, so chicken, duck, goose and turkey all have to be treated as possible here.

Maize and maize protein sit behind the salmon, and the second of the pair tops up the protein line from a plant source, not an animal one. Beet pulp and 1% chicory powder bring the fibre, and the inulin in chicory makes it a prebiotic as well. The cellulose further down is purified fibre, good at bulking a diet but a long way from the fibre in a whole vegetable.

Linseed contributes plant omega 3 and whole egg powder a small measure of very digestible protein. Monocalcium phosphate and potassium chloride close the list. The declared calcium comes from the monocalcium phosphate, and on an assumed 8% moisture it reads 1.2% of dry matter. A growing skeleton is comfortable in that range.

The analysis declares protein at 27.0% and fat at 16.0%. On that same 8% assumption they come out at 29.3% and 17.4% of dry matter. Carbohydrate is estimated at 43.5% of dry matter against the 39.0% typical of a puppy dry food. Energy is our estimate at 370 kcal per 100g, since the maker prints no figure. The vitamin and trace element panel is one of the most thorough you will meet. It runs from the fat soluble vitamins through the B group to choline chloride, zinc in two forms and selenium.

£10.88 a kilo, sold in a 2kg bag.

Portions for a growing pup follow age and expected adult size, so use the chart on the pack and revisit it as the weeks pass. For the smallest pups the guide starts at 30g a day, and it reaches 120g a day for a pup of around 8kg.