Michie's of Cornwall Premium Complete Puppy: Free Range/Organic Chicken with Lamb review

Puppy raw is a fierce field, and the middle of it earns our Outstanding band. All five recipes take that word, and nothing about it is a formality. The Chicken with Lamb is the strongest of them. The Turkey with Lamb holds the same shelf as its siblings, carrying the highest mineral load of the five at 16.4% of dry matter ash and the lowest protein at 40.8%. Protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value all read Outstanding on every recipe, so this is a strong family from end to end.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat & Offal Content: 35% Free Range/Organic Chicken, 25% Lamb with Bone, 10% Chicken Liver, Vegetables & Fruit Content: Fresh Broccoli/Runner Beans 7%, Cooked White Potato 7%, Fresh Carrot 7%, Fresh Apple (Deseeded) 6%, Cooked Sweet Potato 2%, Botanicals/Oils Content: Alfalfa, Organic Cod Liver Oil, Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Sea Kelp, Organic Turmeric

The build is the same in every tub and it is a proper one. Meat and offal make up 70%, with liver held at 10% in all five. For a puppy diet that is a serious organ share, and liver is where an animal keeps much of its vitamin A, its copper and its B vitamins. What remains is a vegetable and fruit fraction and a short line of botanicals and oils, all of it printed with percentages.

Calcium is the number a puppy owner most wants and the one this label does not give. Bone arrives through the meat itself: chicken with bone, turkey with bone and lamb with bone, and in the Wild Venison as ribs written out as 10% meat and 10% bone. Crude ash is the only measure of how much lands in the bowl. It runs from 10.5% of dry matter on the Turkey to 16.4% on the Turkey with Lamb. That spread is unremarkable in a small or medium breed puppy. A giant breed still laying down skeleton is a different matter, and a direct answer from the maker is worth having.

Broccoli or runner beans at 7%, cooked white potato at 7%, fresh carrot at 7%, deseeded apple at 6% and cooked sweet potato at 2% appear in identical proportions across the range. Cooking the potatoes is what unlocks their starch, and it is why carbohydrate here converts to between 11.4% and 16.1% of dry matter against the 3.2% typical for puppy raw. A growing dog burns a great deal, and a gentle carbohydrate alongside the fat is a reasonable way to feed that.

Nothing is added as a vitamin and mineral premix. Instead the last line of the label does the work. Organic cod liver oil brings vitamin D and marine omega 3, organic sea kelp brings iodine, and alfalfa brings minerals and fibre. Organic coconut oil and organic turmeric close it out. With 10% liver behind it in every recipe, this whole-food approach stands up. The micronutrition has to be read off the ingredient list, since no dosed panel is printed.

The animal side is genuinely narrow in three of the five, which is useful when a puppy has already shown you something disagrees with it. Chicken, turkey and venison each appear on their own, and the two lamb recipes pair a bird with lamb at 25%. Fish is the exception nobody escapes, since the cod liver oil sits in all five, and that is a better place for it to be than tucked inside an unnamed oil.

Chicken at 35% with lamb with bone at 25% and chicken liver at 10%. The lamb pushes fat up to 31.3% of dry matter, the richest of the five. At 150 kcal per 100g it packs more energy than any other tub in the range, useful for a puppy that struggles to hold condition.

Every recipe is £5.31 a kilo, in 500g and 1kg packs.

Michie's feed by bodyweight rather than by calories on this range, at 4% a day: 40 grams for a 1kg puppy, 200 grams at 5kg, 600 grams at 15kg and 1200 grams at 30kg.