Natural Dog Food Company Puppy review

This bag sits in our Good band, a little way above the middle of the puppy kibble field, which falls in that band as well. Protein and processing, nutritional balance and value all read Good behind it, with transparency Outstanding.

What puts it there is the meat: a genuinely single animal content declared at more than half the recipe, written out form by form. Nothing is left to guesswork. What keeps it from climbing is a label that stops short in two places, at the unnamed plant groupings and at the missing mineral figures.

Ingredients, as declared: 52% Chicken (includes 26% Freshly Prepared Chicken, 20% Dried Chicken, 4% Chicken Fat, 2% Chicken Gravy), Brown Rice, Fruits*, Vegetables*, Herbs*, Linseed, Brewers Yeast. *9% combined inclusion.

Nothing on this label beats the chicken declaration. The 52% breaks down as 26% freshly prepared chicken and 20% dried, with 4% chicken fat and 2% chicken gravy on top. That tells you the quantity of meat and the form each part of it arrives in. The dried portion carries the most protein through into the finished kibble, since freshly prepared meat gives up the greater part of its weight in cooking.

Look for a second animal and you will not find one. For anyone running an exclusion diet, that matters just as much. The fat is chicken fat, the gravy is chicken gravy, and the only other oil source is linseed, which is a plant. That makes the single protein claim on this bag one you can verify from the list yourself.

Brown rice does the binding, a whole grain that digests steadily and brings its own fibre and B vitamins along. Carbohydrate is estimated at 45.0% of dry matter, above the 39.0% typical for a puppy kibble, which is the trade-off in a food built without pulses or potato in the mix.

Fruits, vegetables and herbs are listed as headings and marked as a combined 9% inclusion. Grouped terms like these are common enough, but they do mean the contents can shift between batches and that you cannot check a particular ingredient in or out.

Linseed brings plant omega 3, and fibre and natural antioxidants with it. Brewers yeast closes the list with B vitamins and a bit of palatability. Protein reads 28.6% of dry matter and fat 15.4%, a moderate profile better matched to a steady grower than to a whirlwind.

The missing vitamin and mineral panel is this label's biggest talking point, and the maker frames it as a choice, saying the range is designed to provide complete nutrition from its ingredients alone. It also means no calcium figure is printed. In rearing a large or giant pup, calcium carries more weight than any other number. Before this becomes the everyday food, a family with a big puppy should get that figure from the maker.

£6.25 a kilo, sold in 2kg, 6kg and 12kg bags.

A puppy's needs change faster than a bag empties. Take the pack guide as a starting point and read it again every few weeks. The smallest pups take 60g a day and the range tops out at 520g.