Paw-Cura Puppy All Breed review

This one lands in our Good band, alongside the middle of the puppy dry field. The honest reading is that the insect protein is doing something genuinely useful while the rest of the recipe is conventional. Carbohydrate converts to 37.9% of dry matter against a typical 39.0%, so the starch load is ordinary rather than light, and protein at 29.7% of dry matter is solid without being a headline. Protein and processing reads Average with nutritional balance Good, and transparency is the standout at Outstanding, because this label gives its percentages and its doses where a good many of its peers do not.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried insect protein (33%), Naked oats, Dried potato flakes, Green peas, Olive oil, Dried brewer's yeast, Flax seed, Minerals, Dried beet pulp, Dried apples, Dried yeast extract (a natural source of MOS (mannan - oligosaccharides) & beta glucan) (0.5%), Dried Carrot, Dried chicory (a natural source of FOS and inulin), Dried chamomile (0.1%), Algae oil, Yucca schidigera.

This recipe exists for its dried insect protein, printed at 33%. Insect meal is a complete protein for dogs and a novel one for very nearly every pup in the country. That is what makes it so useful when a dog has already reacted to the familiar meats. The insect protein goes in dried, and a dried ingredient holds its weight. Fresh meat would have shrunk away, while that 33% stays close to the printed figure.

Naked oats and dried potato flakes carry the starch with green peas behind them. Naked oats are the hull-free form, gentle on the gut after cooking, with fibre, manganese and B vitamins to offer. Peas add antioxidants and a little extra protein of their own. The three together put carbohydrate at 37.9% of dry matter, a normal load for a kibble of this kind.

The fats here were picked with care. Olive oil leads, a proven friend of skin and coat and a natural source of vitamin E. Flax seed adds the plant form of omega 3. The long-chain marine form comes from algae oil with no fish in sight, and that keeps the recipe true to its single-protein idea.

Calcium is printed, and at 1.1% of dry matter it is a temperate figure for a growth food. That reads as a choice, not a shortfall. On a bag sold for sizes from toy up to giant, restraint is the safer direction of travel. Ash sits behind it at 9.3% of dry matter.

The gut package is small and specific. Dried yeast extract at 0.5% is the MOS and beta glucan entry, dried chicory supplying FOS and inulin, and dried beet pulp for gentle, well-tolerated fibre. The list closes with dried apples, dried carrot, chamomile at 0.1% and yucca schidigera. Further up, the dried brewer's yeast carries the whole B vitamin group about as well as any natural ingredient does.

Two things about the panel are worth carrying with you. The pack prints no energy value. The figure of 351 kcal per 100g is our estimate. Selenium arrives as sodium selenite. Pet food may use either that or the organic form, and sodium selenite is the one you meet far more often. The dose is small at 0.2mg per kilo and entirely routine, though the organic form is the more readily taken up of the two.

£8.72 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 6kg bags.

A puppy's daily ration is never a settled figure, so let the growth chart set the starting point and your pup's waistline correct it from there. The label's own guide starts the smallest pups at 30g a day and reaches 168g a day by 10kg of bodyweight.