Nourish Complete Raw Puppy: Chicken review

Our Outstanding band is where this recipe finishes, earned on an 80% chicken lead and named organ meats. Our carbohydrate estimate lands at zero. Puppy raw is a demanding category, and the food sitting in the middle of it reaches the same band, so keeping pace there takes real ingredients rather than clever wording. Every one of the four readings lands on Outstanding.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 80%, Carrots 7% Ox Heart 4%, Green leaf 3% Ox liver 2%, Ox kidney 2%, Butternut 2%, Kelp, flaxseed oil 1%

Chicken at 80% is the whole engine of this recipe. It is the meat British dog food leans on hardest, for good reasons: highly digestible, reliably palatable and a genuinely good protein source for most dogs. The one caveat is a consequence of that popularity, since chicken turns up in more intolerance stories than any other meat, which matters if your puppy has already shown signs of a fussy gut.

The organ share is small but real, and every bit of it is ox. Heart takes 4%, with liver and kidney at 2% each. Liver is the standout of the three, dense in vitamin A, B12, copper and a long tail of trace minerals, and easy for a young dog to digest. It also means beef sits in this bowl alongside the chicken, which the allergen reading agrees with.

The plant side is short and sensible. Carrots at 7% supply vitamin A, and soluble fibre and antioxidants come with them. Butternut brings a touch more of the same, and kelp is the classic whole-food route to iodine. Flaxseed oil at 1% looks after the omega fats. Green leaf at 3% is the only loose entry, since it never says which plant it is. That is a small blank on an otherwise unusually specific label.

The analysis reads exactly like the ingredients suggest. Protein converts to 52.0% of dry matter and fat to 30.4%, with the carbohydrate estimate landing at 0.0% because there is no starch ingredient in the recipe to produce one. Crude ash at 12.4% of dry matter points at a well-boned grind, though Nourish does not print a bone percentage or a calcium figure to confirm it.

At 135 kcal per 100g this is a lighter food than the 155 kcal typical of puppy raw, so expect portions to look generous next to a denser mince. That is worth knowing when you are switching a puppy across and the new bowl suddenly looks fuller than the old one.

£5.22 a kilo. It is packed in 450g and 900g portions.

We have not put a day rate on this one. A puppy's daily amount climbs week by week, so a single figure would be out of date almost as soon as you read it. The label's weight guide is the better place to start, adjusted as the dog grows.