Husse Puppy (Working Dog) review

Working Dog reads Good on our scale. That is the band holding the middle of the puppy dry field, and this one settles a touch below the midpoint. Nutritional balance reads Good here and value the same, while protein and processing and transparency each read Average. The unnamed animal entries and the cereal share drive that pattern, and the analysis has little to do with it. Carbohydrate converts to 41.3% of dry matter against 39.0% for the typical puppy kibble, and because the label prints no moisture those conversions rest on the 8% usual for a dry food.

Ingredients, as declared: dried chicken, wheat, wheat bran, rice, animal fat, maize, linseed, vegetable fibres (3%), dried animal proteins, hydrolysed animal protein, brewer's yeast, minerals, nettle (0.06%), echinacea (0.06%), tomato (0.06%), thyme (0.06%), basil (0.06%), spirulina (0.06%), cranberries (0.06%).

Dried chicken leads, and dried meat is the honest form to lead with. The water is gone before the weighing, so the list describes the bag pretty accurately. Protein is declared at 28.0% as fed, or 30.4% of dry matter, which will do the job for growth without making a headline of itself.

Behind the chicken the recipe leans hard on cereal. Wheat, wheat bran, rice and maize between them push carbohydrate to 41.3% of dry matter, a little above the 39.0% typical of the format. Opinion divides on wheat. It forms into kibble beautifully, but it also gets the blame more than any other grain when a pup's skin or gut plays up. Worth keeping in mind if your pup has form there.

Calcium converts to 1.52% of dry matter and is inside the range growth works to. On any puppy label that is the single most useful number, and large breed rearing turns on it. Seeing it printed, not left to enquiry, is a real point in this bag's favour.

Linseed handles the omega 3 side on its own here, there being no fish anywhere in the recipe. Flax is a genuinely useful source of those fatty acids, short of a marine oil but bringing soluble fibre along with it. Vegetable fibres at 3% add the bulk, which is usually a friendly way of saying beet pulp.

A herbal flourish closes the list: nettle, echinacea, tomato, thyme, basil, spirulina and cranberries, each at 0.06%. Cranberry in particular has a good name for urinary support, though at this inclusion the whole group is there for character. The recipe really stands on its chicken and its cereal.

The added panel covers the essentials, with vitamin A at 19000 IU/kg, vitamin D3 at 1750 IU/kg, iron at 50 mg/kg and zinc at 65 mg/kg. Vitamin E is dosed more modestly than in several of the brand's other puppy recipes, at 75 mg/kg, and tocopherols and rosemary extract do the preserving naturally. Sepiolite at 10 g/kg is a clay working as a processing aid rather than a nutrient.

£3.77 a kilo, sold in 15 kg bags and a 2 x 15 kg double.

Growth feeding works backwards from the adult your pup will become, not forwards from the puppy in front of you. Start from the bag's chart and adjust it as the weeks pass.