Fish4Dogs Finest Puppy Complete: Finest Salmon review

Both recipes come to rest in our Good band, level with the typical puppy dry food. Transparency reads Outstanding on both, with nutritional balance Good either side, and protein and processing reads Good on the salmon and Average on the white fish. The fish content itself is genuinely good and the panel is honestly printed. What holds the pair back is the size of the starch share, plus a label that stops short of calcium and of a full mineral list.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon (28%), Sweet Potato (26%), Salmon Meal (20%), Pea Starch, Salmon Oil (8%), Beet Pulp, Brewers Yeast, Sunflower Oil, Minerals.

Fish arrives twice in both bags, fresh at the very top and again as salmon meal a few places down. That pairing is deliberate and it works. Fresh fish gives flavour and quality but sheds much of its weight during baking, and the meal, already dried, brings its protein through to the finished kibble. Between them they lift protein to 30.0% as fed, or 32.6% of dry matter. For a growth food that is a respectable figure.

Salmon oil is declared at its own percentage on both recipes, and it is the ingredient a puppy owner should be most pleased about. Marine omega 3 is the form dogs use most readily, and it feeds brain and eye development through the months when both are being built. It does no harm at all to how the bowl smells to a fussy pup. Sunflower oil sits behind it, carrying natural vitamin E and very little saturated fat.

The binding falls to pea starch and a root vegetable, and neither bag contains cereal. Moisture is declared at 8.0%, which means the conversions here rest on the label: carbohydrate reads 38.7% as fed and 42.1% of dry matter, above the middle of the puppy dry field. Beet pulp adds a well tolerated fibre. Brewers yeast brings a natural spread of B vitamins, and its protein holds all nine essential amino acids.

The declared panel is complete as far as it goes. Protein, fat, fibre, ash at 7.0% and moisture are all printed, and energy comes out at 381 kcal per 100g, close to the 376 typical of the field. Calcium is the missing line. For a large or giant breed pup that number matters more than any other, since a fast growing skeleton is shaped by the mineral level it gets.

The additive list is short and specific: vitamins A, D3 and E, taurine at 1 g per kilo, and iodine at 1.6 mg per kilo. Tocopherol rich extracts keep the food fresh, with no chemical preservative. A dog usually makes its own taurine, which makes adding it outright a considerate touch. The remaining trace minerals are not listed individually and sit under the general minerals entry on the recipe.

Salmon at 28% opens this recipe, and behind it come salmon meal at 20% and salmon oil at 8%. Sweet potato at 26% does the starch, with pea starch alongside. Salmon runs the length of the list with nothing else animal on it. If you are keeping a pup to one fish and nothing else, this is the bag. Sweet potato also brings a little more fibre and beta carotene with it than the plain potato used in the other recipe.

Both recipes come in 1.5kg, 6kg and 12kg bags.

Puppy portions never hold still for long. The amount a growing dog needs climbs with age and with the frame it is heading for, then eases back once the fastest growth is over. Use the chart on the bag, weigh the food out, and let your pup's waistline settle the final call.