Happy Dog Puppy & Junior Dry: Baby Lamb & Rice review

This range holds together more tightly than its size suggests. Eight of the nine recipes settle in our Good band, level with the typical puppy dry food, and only Mini Baby Lamb steps down into our Average band.

Two things separate them: how much of the meat is named, and how much cereal is in the bag. The salmon recipes open with dried chicken and then name their salmon flour, so you can follow the animal protein down the list. The poultry recipes open on a protein concentrate that names a bird group and not a bird, and the Junior bags let the cereal share climb as the declared protein comes down.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb protein* (20%), rice flour (19%), greaves, maize flour, beef fat, rice protein (5.5%), sunflower oil, hydrolysed liver, beet molasses* (desugared), cellulose, apple pomace*, rapeseed oil, potassium chloride, yeast*, sodium chloride, seaweed*, linseed, psyllium husk, mussel meat* (0.05%), yucca schidigera*, yeast* (extracted), milk thistle, artichoke, dandelion, ginger, birch leaves, nettle, chamomile, coriander, rosemary, sage, licorice root, thyme, (dry herbs total 0.16%) *) dried

Every recipe here is put together the same way. A dried protein leads, a rendered meat ingredient usually follows it, a rice or maize base fills the middle, and a long and genuinely detailed tail of botanicals closes the list out. Once you have read one label you can read them all.

Greaves is the protein rich solid left behind when animal fat is rendered off. It is a real meat ingredient and it earns its place. The label never says which animal it came from, the single biggest gap in an otherwise talkative list.

Hydrolysed liver or hydrolysed protein appears in all nine recipes as a palatant. It works, and it is one reason these bags go down well. A hydrolysate names no species either, and a genuine exclusion diet has to read past the headline protein.

The declared analysis splits neatly by stage. The Baby recipes print protein at 30.0% and fat at 16.0%; the Junior recipes step down to 26.0% and 13.0% as the fastest growth passes. Crude ash is 7.5% on most and crude fibre 3.0%, and no recipe declares its moisture, which is why the dry matter figures here rest on an assumed 8%.

Carbohydrate converts to between 38.1% and 46.1% of dry matter across the range, against 39.0% typical of a puppy dry food. The three Junior bags sit at the top of that spread, where the cereal fills the space the lower protein leaves.

Calcium is printed on all but one recipe and lands between 1.58% and 1.74% of dry matter. Those are healthy levels for a small or medium pup, who will use every bit of it. They sit above what large breed growth plans generally aim at. That is the one place this range asks for a conversation with your vet, where a pup will grow to a large or giant frame.

The tail is where the range stands apart. Milk thistle, artichoke, dandelion, ginger, birch leaves, nettle, chamomile, coriander, rosemary, sage, licorice root and thyme are all named and add up to a small fraction of the bag. Seaweed, psyllium husk, apple pomace and mussel meat at 0.05% or 0.04% sit alongside them. Read it as seasoning with intent; the recipes stand on their protein and their cereal.

Cellulose does the bulk fibre work in most of the recipes. It is a purified plant fibre, not fibre arriving inside whole food. That is why the apple pomace and psyllium husk beside it are the more interesting entries on the fibre side.

The added panels print their doses rather than bare names, though the Junior Fit & Vital listing stops after the vitamins. L-tryptophan is added at 1000 mg per kilo on several of the lamb recipes, and the vitamin and trace element sets elsewhere cover the ground a complete growth food needs to cover.

Baby Lamb & Rice puts lamb protein at 20% at the front with rice flour at 19% behind it, then greaves and maize flour. Rice protein at 5.5% adds a plant protein to the mix. The added fat here comes from beef fat and not poultry fat, which is worth knowing if beef is off the menu for your pup. Calcium converts to 1.74% of dry matter, energy is estimated at 365 kcal per 100g, and the recipe sits in our Good band.

Across the range the figure runs from £3.28 to £8.25 a kilo, in bags from 800g up to 18kg.

No single figure covers a whole growth period. Read the chart for the stage your pup has reached, and go back to it as the weeks pass, because one scoop will not carry them the whole way.