James Wellbeloved Puppy Pouches: Turkey With Rice & Vegetables In Gravy 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), mix of brown and white rice (4%), dried carrots (1%, equivalent to carrots 7.3%), dried peas (1%, equivalent to peas 3.6%), minerals, oils and fats (including linseed oil 0.25%), dextrose, dried beet pulp, seaweed (0.11%), cellulose, tomato powder. *100% natural. Chunk typically 37.5% 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.

This pouch keeps turkey as the only meat at 76% of the chunk and brings in a mix of brown and white rice at 4%, with the chunk typically 37.5% of the pack. Declared protein is 5.5%, converting to 30.6% of dry matter, fat is 4.0% and estimated energy is 76 kcal per 100g. The list is the shortest in the range and nearly every entry on it carries a percentage, which is why the label reads so cleanly.

£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.