Opti Life Puppy: Maxi review

Each of the three varieties reads inside our Good band, level with the middle of the puppy dry field, which occupies that band as well. Transparency reads Excellent and value Good across all three, with protein and processing and nutritional balance rising as the meat share does, which is just what three versions of one recipe should look like. The dehydrated chicken lead is what earns the position; the absent calcium line and the unnamed animal entries are what cap it.

Ingredients, as declared: chicken (dehydrated, 30%), rice (30%), rice flour, animal fat, vegetable fibres (cellulose 3%, beet pulp 1%), linseed, hydrolysed animal proteins, minerals, salmon oil, brewer's yeast, krill (0.5%), FOS (0.5%), dried whole eggs, MOS (0.1%), sea algae (Ascophyllum nodosum), salts of fatty acids (butyric acid), glucosamine 500 mg/kg, rosemary (18 mg/kg), green tea (12 mg/kg).

The three recipes are variations on one idea, and the variation is deliberate. As the target adult size drops, the meat climbs and the rice retreats: 30% chicken against 30% rice in Maxi, 35% against 25% in Medium, and 40% against 20% in Mini. A small dog has less room in the stomach, so what goes in it has to be denser, and the numbers do exactly that.

All the chicken here is dehydrated, which changes how the percentage should be read. Because the water goes before mixing, the declared share reaches the finished kibble at close to its printed size. Nothing shrinks away in the oven.

Rice does the starch work throughout, with rice flour behind it. It is a gentle, familiar cereal that most young dogs digest without fuss, though it does mean no bag in this range is a grain-free one.

Fibre arrives as vegetable fibres, itemised as cellulose alongside beet pulp at 1%. Of that pairing, beet pulp is the useful half, a moderate fibre most dogs tolerate well. Cellulose is purified powder, and it adds bulk without adding much beyond it. Linseed brings plant omega 3 to the same part of the list.

The support cast holds steady across the range: FOS at 0.5% and MOS at 0.1% as prebiotics, krill at 0.5%, dried whole eggs and sea algae. Salts of fatty acids appear too, printed as butyric acid. It is the short chain fat that fuels the cells lining a gut. Salmon oil covers the marine omega side, and rosemary at 18 mg/kg with green tea at 12 mg/kg finishes each list.

What none of the three prints is a calcium figure, and that is the omission worth naming on a growth range that includes a Maxi bag for large-breed pups. A large-breed growth claim really wants that number visible. Here the number is simply absent, with nothing to suggest it sits out of range. That makes it a question for the maker and not a mark against the recipe.

Animal fat and hydrolysed animal proteins run through all three without a species attached, and salmon oil and krill sit fish alongside the chicken. Neither point troubles an ordinary pup, but between them they mean none of these bags can anchor a strict exclusion trial.

Maxi is the large-breed version and the leanest of the three: dehydrated chicken at 30% with rice at 30%, and vegetable fibres itemised as cellulose at 3% next to beet pulp at 1%. It declares 26.0% protein, 14.0% fat, 2.5% fibre and 7.0% ash, converting to 28.3%, 15.2%, 2.7% and 7.6% of dry matter, with carbohydrate the highest in the range at 46.2%. Energy is declared at 400 kcal per 100g, the gentlest of the three, which fits the slow and steady growth a heavy-framed pup is best reared on. Glucosamine runs at 500 mg/kg and taurine at 1100 mg.

£4.54 a kilo across the three. Mini comes in 2.5kg and 7.5kg bags, Medium in a 2.5kg bag and a bulk bag, and Maxi in the bulk bag only.

A growing pup's needs shift from month to month. The figure that matters is the one the pack's chart gives for their age and the adult size they will grow into, checked against how they are actually filling out.