James Wellbeloved Puppy/Junior Grain Free Dry: Turkey & Veg review

This recipe comes to rest in our Good band, level with the typical puppy dry food, with transparency reading Outstanding and value taking the same reading as the food overall. Nutritional balance reads Good and protein and processing Average. The reading is shaped as much by what is absent as by what is present. Moisture and calcium are both left off the panel, so a fair slice of the label has to be assumed rather than checked. On the figures that are printed, protein converts to 32.1% of dry matter and carbohydrate to an estimated 38.7%, close to the 39.0% typical, so going grain free here has not lightened the starch load.

Ingredients, as declared: dried turkey protein* (25%), dried potatoes* (25%), pea protein, poultry fat*, sweet potato* (6.5%), pea starch, whole linseed* (3.2%), turkey gravy, tomato pomace* (2.5%), dried peas* (2%), sugar beet pulp*, alfalfa meal*, seaweed* (0.5%), dried carrots* (0.5%), minerals, fish oil, chicory extract* (0.25%), yucca extract* (0.02%). *Natural ingredient.Produced in a factory that handles grains and other protein sources.

Dried turkey protein at 25% leads the list. Dried meat is an efficient way to buy protein, because the water has gone before weighing. The percentage on the label reaches the finished kibble more or less as printed.

Dried potatoes come in at the same 25%, with sweet potato at 6.5% and pea starch behind them. Potato is mostly starch, so this is a straight exchange of one carbohydrate source for another rather than a lighter recipe, and the estimated carbohydrate figure bears that out.

The plant side is nicely itemised further down: tomato pomace at 2.5%, dried peas at 2%, dried carrots at 0.5%, with sugar beet pulp and alfalfa meal for fibre. Carrots bring vitamin A. Beet pulp is a well-tolerated fibre, and both are familiar entries in a growth food.

Omega 3 arrives from two directions here, whole linseed at 3.2% on the plant side and fish oil on the marine one. Seaweed at 0.5% adds minerals and iodine. The added fat is poultry fat. That is better than a plain animal fat heading, but the bird is still not named.

One line at the very end of the ingredient list is easy to miss and matters to some households: the food is produced in a factory that handles grains and other protein sources. The recipe itself carries no grain. If your dog reacts seriously to grain, talk it over with your vet before the switch.

The panel prints protein at 29.5%, fat at 15.5%, fibre at 2.9% and ash at 8.5%, then leaves out both moisture and calcium. Our dry matter conversions therefore work from the standard 8% moisture assumption for a kibble. With no calcium number printed, nothing about large breed growth can be claimed from this label. Ash at 9.2% of dry matter shows a properly mineralised food, but ash counts every mineral together and cannot stand in for calcium on its own.

£10.66 a kilo, sold in 1.5kg and 4.5kg bags.

A pup's daily amount climbs steadily and then levels off as the frame finishes. Take the bag's chart as your guide, and let the weekly weigh-in tell you when to move up a step.