Iams Advanced Nutrition Puppy Small and Medium Breed review

The small and medium recipe sits level with the typical puppy kibble and reads Good on our scale. Transparency is Outstanding, protein and processing Good, nutritional balance the same. Where the meat is concerned it does well: the named poultry share is higher than in its large breed stablemate, and every fat says where it came from. Protein converts to 30.4% of dry matter, a decent level for growth.

The gap is in what the label leaves off. Neither calcium nor moisture carries a figure. The dry matter numbers on this page therefore rest on the 8% moisture usual for a kibble. The one figure a puppy owner most wants to check is simply not there to check. Carbohydrate converts to 41.5% of dry matter against the 39.0% typical, so the cereal share sits a little over the middle of the field.

Ingredients, as declared: dried chicken and turkey 30% (including chicken 18%), barley, maize, fresh chicken (10%), pork fat, rice, dried beet pulp (2.5%), chicken gravy, fish oil, sunflower oil, fructooligosaccharides (0.2%), brewer's dried yeast, minerals.

The poultry is declared with useful precision. The list gives dried chicken and turkey at 30%, breaks the chicken out at 18%, and adds 10% fresh chicken behind them. Drying takes the water out before the weighing. The bulk of that 30% is still present in the kibble that comes out, while fresh chicken shrinks a lot in the oven. Protein comes out at 28.0% as fed, or 30.4% of dry matter.

Barley, maize and rice follow, three grains sharing the starch load. Carbohydrate converts to 41.5% of dry matter, a little above the 39.0% typical for the format, so the cereal presence is real without being extreme. Barley is a sound grain once cooked, easily digested and bringing fibre with it, but it carries gluten, so a pup being kept off wheat for gluten reasons needs to avoid it as well.

Calcium is where this label goes quiet, and it deserves saying plainly. No calcium figure is printed. Calcium does the most work of any number in a growth food, since a skeleton built too fast or on the wrong mineral balance is the classic problem in puppy feeding. Small and medium pups carry far less risk on that front than a giant breed would, and the maker has sensibly kept this bag to those sizes. If you like to see the figure before you commit, ask them for it.

The fats are all named and they earn their places. Pork fat is palatable and uncommon in dog food, so it is a meat a lot of pups will not have met before. Fish oil supplies the marine omega 3 fatty acids used by a growing brain and coat. Sunflower oil is a good plant oil to see, light on saturated fat and a natural carrier of vitamin E. Fat is declared at 17.0% as fed, converting to 18.5% of dry matter, and energy runs to 392 kcal per 100g against the 376 typical of a puppy dry food.

The gut side is brief and honest. Dried beet pulp at 2.5% gives a gentle, well tolerated fibre. Fructooligosaccharides at 0.2% is the prebiotic, working on the friendly bacteria further down. Chicken gravy and brewer's dried yeast finish the list, and B vitamins come naturally with the yeast.

Vitamin A is printed at 23000 IU/kg, vitamin D3 at 1100 IU/kg and vitamin E at 135 mg/kg. The trace minerals run to zinc at 115 mg/kg, iron at 69 mg/kg, manganese at 40 mg/kg, copper at 13 mg/kg, iodine at 2.6 mg/kg and selenium at 0.08 mg/kg as sodium selenite. Nothing on the ingredient list hides behind a category term, so the allergen picture of chicken, turkey, pork, fish and grain is a complete account rather than an inference.

Sold in 800 g, 2 kg, 3 kg and 12 kg bags.

Portions for a growing pup are set by the adult weight they are heading towards, so follow the chart on the bag and revisit it every few weeks while their shape is still changing.