Lovejoys Original Dry Puppy: Turkey & Rice review

This kibble finishes in our Good band, level with the middle of the puppy dry field. Nutritional balance reads Good, and the analysis behind it is a strong one by growth food standards, while transparency is the bright spot at Outstanding. What pulls the overall position down is what the label withholds: no moisture declaration and no calcium figure. Once the 29.0% turkey meal has been counted, the recipe leans on rice, oats and pea protein. That leaves protein and processing at Average.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey Meat Meal (29.0%), Rice (28.0%), Whole Oats, Pea Protein, Turkey Fat, Turkey Digest, Whole Linseed (2.5%), Salmon Oil (1.0%), Alfalfa Pellets, Seaweed Meal (0.5%), Fructo-oligosaccharides (Prebiotic FOS), Extract of Yucca Schidigera (200 mg/kg)

Turkey meat meal at 29.0% leads, and meal is worth decoding. Meal is meat dried and rendered to a powder before it goes in. A meal's declared share therefore arrives in the finished kibble near enough as printed, where fresh meat would not. Turkey is lean and digestible, and dogs like it. It supplies the fat and the digest here as well, so one bird accounts for every animal ingredient in the bag.

Rice at 28.0% is almost as large an entry as the meat, with whole oats next. Both are gentle, familiar grains that most puppies handle comfortably, and oats bring useful fibre with them, but they do mean this is a grain-inclusive recipe and that the starch load is substantial.

Pea protein follows, and it is a refined byproduct of pea processing rather than a whole food. For digestibility, vegetable protein does not match the animal kind, so the 30.0% declared protein is worth reading with that entry in mind.

The tail of the list is sensibly chosen. Two sources cover the omega 3 side: salmon oil at 1.0% for the marine share and whole linseed at 2.5% for the plant one. Alfalfa pellets and seaweed meal at 0.5% add trace minerals, and fructo-oligosaccharides feed the helpful gut bacteria. Yucca schidigera extract at 200 mg/kg works on stool odour.

The added vitamins and minerals are printed one by one, which is more than many bags manage. Vitamin E sits at 190 mg/kg, zinc at 100 mg/kg, iron at 60 mg/kg, manganese at 50 mg/kg, copper at 7.50 mg/kg, iodine at 1.50 mg/kg and selenium at 0.10 mg/kg. The selenium arrives as sodium selenite, the less bioavailable of the two forms allowed here and much the more common in the trade.

The declared analysis reads well at 30.0% protein and 15.5% fat, with fibre at 3.0% and ash at 8.0%. Moisture is the missing line. Because the label does not give one, the dry matter column here uses the standard 8% assumption for kibble. That puts protein at 32.6%, fat at 16.8% and carbohydrate at an estimated 38.6%, close to the 39.0% typical for the puppy dry field. Treat those as indicative figures.

The label skips calcium too, and on a growth food no number works harder. Since the bag is listed for puppies of every size, ask the maker for that figure before this becomes the everyday food of a pup destined to be large or giant.

£5.52 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 12kg bags.

Portions here follow growth, not habit. Take the age band and the weight your pup will reach as an adult from the chart on the bag, then step the amount down as the fastest months pass.