Josera SensiJunior review

Our scoring gives SensiJunior a place in the Good band, matching where the typical adult dry food ends up, though the two are put together quite differently. Protein at 32.6% of dry matter and carbohydrate down at 39.9% against a 46.2% norm both read better than a dry food usually manages, and the additive panel is dosed throughout. Holding it level are a list led by rice and a main protein entry that names no bird. Protein and processing reads Average with nutritional balance and transparency both at Good.

Ingredients, as declared: rice; poultry protein (dried); poultry fat; duck protein (dried) 10.0 %; potato protein; salmon (dried) 4.0 %; poultry protein (hydrolysed); beet fibre; carob meal; plant fibre; minerals; yeast; chicory root (ground, natural source of inulin); psyllium husks; New Zealand greenlipped mussel meat (Perna canaliculus), dried.

Rice heads the list, and on a food for sensitive digestions that is a deliberate choice. It is the cereal dogs tolerate most reliably and the one least likely to sit behind a reaction. There is no maize, no wheat and no barley anywhere below it, so rice is the whole of the grain story here.

Dried poultry protein sits second and dried duck protein at 10.0% comes fourth, and a hydrolysed poultry protein appears lower down. The duck is the transparent one, named and measured, which helps an owner keeping track of what their dog has already met. The larger poultry entry keeps the family name, and that is the label's weak point. Protein converts to 32.6% of dry matter, a strong figure for a dog still building.

The digestive section is the reason for the name. Psyllium husks are a soluble fibre that takes on water and steadies a loose stool, and carob meal has long been used for the same job. Beet fibre covers the insoluble side, and ground chicory root supplies the inulin that gut bacteria live on. Crude fibre reads only 2.5% of dry matter, so the kind of fibre matters here more than the amount.

Dried salmon at 4.0% and dried green-lipped mussel meat bring the marine oils, the usual way a growth recipe covers omega 3s and joints in one go. Potato protein turns up midway down the list. It lifts the analysis figure without matching meat for quality, so read the headline protein with that in the background.

The additive panel is dosed in full, with taurine at 1000 mg/kg, L-carnitine at 200 mg/kg, vitamin C at 200 mg/kg, and zinc and copper as glycine chelates at 180 mg/kg and 18 mg/kg. What is missing is calcium, which is not declared anywhere, and on a food for large breed puppies that is the number an owner would most like to check.

Sold in a 15kg bag at £3.53 a kilo.

Feeding a 15kg adult in moderate condition comes to about 212 grams a day and £0.75, based on a maintenance estimate of 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). The label's own table asks 130 to 150 grams for a 3kg pup on its way to 10kg, working from the weight now and the adult size ahead.