James Wellbeloved Puppy Pouches: Turkey In Gravy Grain Free review

Every pouch in this range lands in our Average band, two bands under the Excellent the typical wet puppy food holds, in a category that scores strongly from top to bottom. Transparency reads Outstanding on all four, which is where the itemised chunk pays off, and protein and processing reads Poor across the range. Nutritional balance reads Excellent on the two grain free pouches and Good on the two made with rice. Protein converts to between 30.6% and 34.4% of dry matter depending on the recipe, so there is real meat working away behind the gravy.

Ingredients, as declared: turkey* 76% in the chunk (necks, deboned ground turkey, heart, liver), pea starch, dried carrots (1%, equivalent to carrots 7.3%), dried potatoes (1%, equivalent to potatoes 4.0%), dried peas (1%, equivalent to peas 3.6%), minerals, pea protein, dried beet pulp, oils and fats (including linseed oil 0.24%), dextrose, seaweed (0.12%), cellulose, tomato powder. *100% natural. Chunk typically 42% of the product.

The chunk is where the meat lives, and this label is unusually straight about it. It tells you how much of each pouch is chunk, then breaks the chunk itself into named parts, so the headline percentages describe meat within the chunk and not meat within the pouch. That is more honest arithmetic than one flattering number, even if it asks a moment's reading.

Offal carries a good share of the meat here. Heart, liver and kidney are nutrient dense foods a growing dog handles well, liver especially so for its vitamin A, B12 and copper, and turkey necks bring their own natural minerals. It is closer to how a dog would eat than a plain muscle meat recipe.

The plant side is small and named: dried carrots, dried peas and, in two of the recipes, dried potatoes, each printed with its fresh equivalent so you can see what the drying has done. Tomato powder and seaweed close the list, the seaweed at around a tenth of a percent adding minerals and iodine.

Two entries are looser than the rest. Oils and fats is a heading broad enough to cover almost anything, although linseed oil is at least named and given a percentage inside it. Cellulose is a fibre powder and not whole plant fibre. Dextrose sits nearby, a simple sugar in a small quantity.

Calcium converts to 1.39% of dry matter in every recipe, a comfortable place for a growth food to sit and one that covers large breed rearing as readily as small. Ash converts to 8.9%, the mineral picture behind that figure, and the added panel prints vitamin D3, vitamin E, copper, iodine, iron, manganese and zinc with a dose against each.

Where these pouches give ground is carbohydrate. Whether the recipe binds with pea starch or with rice, the estimated carbohydrate converts to a good deal more of the dry matter than the 13.6% a typical wet puppy food carries. Nothing there does any harm, but it is why the meat reads better on the front of the pouch than in the analysis.

Turkey is the only meat in this pouch, at 76% of the chunk, and the chunk itself runs to 42% of the pack. Necks, deboned ground turkey, heart and liver are all named inside it. Pea starch and dried potatoes stand in for rice, so a grain free household is covered. Protein is declared at 6.2%, converting to 34.4% of dry matter, with fat at 4.1% and estimated energy at 76 kcal per 100g. With turkey the only animal named, this is the obvious pouch for a pup on a single meat. The oils and fats heading is the one loose end to keep in mind.

£13.32 a kilo for the two grain free recipes and £10.64 a kilo for the two made with rice, sold in multipacks.

A puppy's needs shift week by week, and wet food fills the bowl in far bigger volumes than kibble does. Work from the feeding guide on the pack and adjust to the shape your pup is holding.