Honey's Puppy Range: Pasture Fed Beef review

All four recipes sit in our Outstanding band, and they hold it evenly, with no one recipe leaning on the others. Raw for puppies is a strong field and the middle of it reaches that same band, so holding a place in it means keeping company with the best on the shelf. Protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value all read Outstanding on every recipe. The meat fraction climbing to 89.5% for growth, one named animal per tub and a label that tells you how the animal was farmed are what earn it.

Ingredients, as declared: Minced pasture fed beef including finely minced beef bone and beef heart (89.5%). Minced carrot, cabbage, cauliflower, parsnip and other seasonal veg (10%). Omega-3 (0.5%).

This is the Honey's adult build with the dial turned firmly towards growth. Meat with finely minced bone and heart takes 89.5% of the tub, well up from the two thirds the adult ranges use, and the vegetable share drops back to 10%. That shift matters for a puppy, whose protein and mineral demands run a long way ahead of a grown dog's, and it is the clearest sign that these recipes were reworked rather than relabelled.

Bone is minced through the meat rather than added as its own line, and that is how the calcium arrives. Crude ash converts to between 7.5% and 15.8% of dry matter across the four, a wide spread for recipes built to one pattern, and no calcium percentage is printed on any of them. On a large breed puppy, where the calcium ceiling genuinely matters through the growth months, that is the figure to ask Honey's for before you settle on a recipe.

The omega-3 at 0.5% is the single addition anywhere in the Honey's catalogue, put there for the fats a growing brain and a growing coat need. The label does not say what it has been drawn from. Inclusions at that level are commonly marine. Where fish is being kept out of a puppy's bowl altogether, put the question to Honey's before you order.

The vegetable tenth names carrot, cabbage, cauliflower and parsnip. Other seasonal veg can go in too. At a tenth of the tub it is a supporting part, not a bulking agent. The carbohydrate estimate comes out at zero on all four recipes. That is exactly what a bowl of meat and bone with a little vegetable should look like.

The four analyses vary more than the shared recipe suggests. Protein converts to between 45.8% and 61.6% of dry matter and fat to between 21.5% and 40.3%. The Chicken is a considerably richer feed than the Beef, even though the two labels read almost identically. None of the four energy figures is declared; all are estimates. Start from the guide and let the scales and your puppy's shape adjust it.

Minced pasture fed beef at 89.5%, bone and heart minced in with it. It is much the leanest of the four, protein converting to 61.6% of dry matter against 21.5% fat at 111 kcal per 100g. Portions run largest here, and it suits a puppy that is already carrying plenty of condition.

Per kilo, the Beef is £9.40, the Pork £10.24, the Chicken £10.64 and the Venison £13.40. Every recipe comes in a 250g tub.

A single daily figure does not fit a puppy, whose needs move week by week, so Honey's guide works from current weight and age instead. For a puppy up to 5kg it runs from 350 to 400 grams a day at the youngest stage, easing down to 125 to 150 grams as the puppy matures.