Natures Deli Puppy Wet Food review

Wet food for puppies is a category that tends to do well, and its typical example reaches our Excellent band. This tray gets there on its own terms: an even duck and chicken split, very little starch behind it, and an analysis that supports the front of the pack instead of quietly contradicting it.

Protein and processing comes back Excellent, nutritional balance and transparency Outstanding, value Excellent as well. That points to a recipe sound in several places at once, with no single trick holding it up.

Ingredients, as declared: Duck (31%)*, Chicken (31%)*, Carrots (4%)*, Brown Rice (4%)*, Dried Peas (1% Dried Peas, Equivalent to 4% Peas)*, Salmon Oil*, Minerals, Chicory Root (a source of Prebiotic FOS, 0.2%)*, Sage (0.1%)*.

Duck and chicken at 31% each is an unusual way to build a wet food, since most trays lead with one meat and let a second make up numbers. Here they carry equal billing, and the analysis follows. Protein converts to 40.0% of dry matter and fat to 36.7%. A food with meat at its base reads like that. Duck brings a richer, darker meat to sit beside the chicken, and both are easy on a young digestion.

The starch is barely there. Brown rice at 4%, carrots at 4% and dried peas at 1% are all there is, and the label explains that the dried peas stand for 4% fresh. Carbohydrate is estimated at 6.7% of dry matter where the typical puppy wet food sits at 13.6%. Most pups take the fibre in their stride, modest as it is at 3.3% of dry matter.

Salmon oil is the fat worth noting. The long chain omega 3 fats it brings feed a growing brain and eyes. A coat draws on them too, and a poultry recipe would otherwise run short. It also means fish is in the tray, so an owner working through a fish free elimination diet needs to know it is there.

Chicory root at 0.2% brings the prebiotic FOS, and at that level it is doing a real job, feeding the gut bacteria a young dog is still establishing. Sage at 0.1% rounds off the list as a herb rather than a nutrient.

Minerals appear as one grouped entry with no itemised panel behind it, and ash converts to 13.3% of dry matter, so the mineral load itself is generous. No calcium figure is published. On a growth label that is the single most useful number, and without it there is no full picture of how the tray suits a big breed pup.

£3.98 a kilo, sold in 400g trays.

From our standard energy estimate, a 10kg pup aged four to twelve months works through somewhere around 497g to 608g a day, and rather more than that in the first four months. A puppy's daily amount is really a series of amounts, so revisit the guide every few weeks against their weight and expected adult size and let condition make the final call.