Pedigree Junior Puppy Pouches in Jelly review

The middle of the puppy wet field reaches our Excellent band, and this one sits two bands under it, in Average. The gap is almost entirely about naming rather than nutrition. On the numbers the food does well for its class, with dry matter protein at 45.9% and carbohydrate at 9.2% against a category typical of 13.6%, and nutritional balance reads Outstanding on that basis. Poor is the reading on protein and processing, because meat and animal derivatives, cereals, fish and fish derivatives and derivatives of vegetable origin between them leave most of the pouch unnamed.

Ingredients, as declared: With Beef and Liver Mix and Rice: Meat and Animal Derivatives^ (including a Mix of Beef 6% and Pork Liver 8% in the Chunk), Cereals (including Rice Flour 1.1%, Equivalent to Cooked Rice 4%), Minerals, Fish and Fish Derivatives, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Vegetable Protein Extracts, Yeast (Mannan-Oligosaccharides 0.1%), With Chicken and Rice: Meat and Animal Derivatives^ (including Chicken 14% and Pork Liver 8% in The Chunk), Cereals (including Rice Flour 1.1%, Equivalent to Cooked Rice 4%), Minerals, Fish and Fish Derivatives, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Vegetable Protein Extracts, Yeast (Mannan-Oligosaccharides 0.1%), With Lamb and Liver Mix and Rice: Meat and Animal Derivatives^ (including a Mix of Lamb 6% and Pork Liver 8% in the Chunk), Cereals (including Rice Flour 1.1%, Equivalent to Cooked Rice 4%), Minerals, Fish and Fish Derivatives, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Vegetable Protein Extracts, Yeast (Mannan-Oligosaccharides 0.1%), With Poultry and Rice: Meat and Animal Derivatives^ (including Poultry 14% and Pork Liver 8% in The Chunk), Cereals (including Rice Flour 1.1% Equivalent to Cooked Rice 4%), Minerals, Fish and Fish Derivatives, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Vegetable Protein Extracts, Yeast (Mannan-Oligosaccharides 0.1%), ^91% Natural, Chunk typically 54% of the product, With Beef and Liver Mix and Rice: Meat and Animal Derivatives* (including a Mix of Beef 6% and Pork Liver 8% in the Chunk), Cereals (including Rice Flour 1.1%, Equivalent to Cooked Rice 4%), Minerals, Fish and Fish Derivatives, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Vegetable Protein Extracts, Yeast (Mannan-Oligosaccharides 0.1%), With Chicken and Rice: Meat and Animal Derivatives* (including Chicken 14% and Pork Liver 8% in the Chunk), Cereals (including Rice Flour 1.1%, Equivalent to Cooked Rice 4%), Minerals, Fish and Fish Derivatives, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Vegetable Protein Extracts, Yeast (Mannan-Oligosaccharides 0.1%), With Lamb and Liver Mix and Rice: Meat and Animal Derivatives* (including a Mix of Lamb 6% and Pork Liver 8% in the Chunk), Cereals (including Rice Flour 1.1%, Equivalent to Cooked Rice 4%), Minerals, Fish and Fish Derivatives, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Vegetable Protein Extracts, Yeast (Mannan-Oligosaccharides 0.1%), With Poultry and Rice: Meat and Animal Derivatives* (including Poultry 14% and Pork Liver 8% in the Chunk), Cereals (including Rice Flour 1.1%, Equivalent to Cooked Rice 4%), Minerals, Fish and Fish Derivatives, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Vegetable Protein Extracts, Yeast (Mannan-Oligosaccharides 0.1%), *91% Natural, Chunk typically 54% of the product

The chunk is where the named meat lives, and the label puts the chunk at typically 54% of the product. Inside it, the beef and lamb versions declare 6% of their headline meat with 8% pork liver, while the chicken and poultry versions declare 14% with the same 8% pork liver. In the beef and lamb recipes that makes pork liver the largest named animal inclusion, which is why pork rather than the flavour on the front is the meat doing most of the work.

Liver is a good thing to find in a puppy food. It is among the most nutrient-dense ingredients available, rich in vitamin B12, vitamin A, copper, folate and selenium, easily digested and reliably popular with young dogs. Pork is also uncommon in dog food, so for a great many pups it counts as a novel meat.

Beyond the chunk, the recipe is written in the broad terms European labelling allows. Prime muscle or the parts of a carcass nobody wants: meat and animal derivatives covers both, and the phrase itself tells you nothing about which. Some very good makers use it to protect a formula, and a food fed on this scale is unlikely to be doing anything unusual. If you need to know exactly what your pup is eating, though, this label will not tell you.

The same applies to cereals, fish and fish derivatives, derivatives of vegetable origin and vegetable protein extracts. The cereal part is at least partly pinned down, with rice flour at 1.1% declared as equivalent to 4% cooked rice, and the total starch load is genuinely small at 9.2% of dry matter. Vegetable protein extract is the entry most worth noting. Plant protein does less for a dog than the animal kind, and the source here is not given.

Nothing on this label does better than the declared analysis. Protein at 8.5% and fat at 5.7% look modest until you remember the pouch is 81.5% water, at which point they convert to 45.9% and 30.8% of dry matter. Fibre is minimal at 2.2% of dry matter and ash lands at 11.9%.

Calcium converts to 1.95% of dry matter, a healthy load of mineral for laying down bone. Growth plans for large breeds normally sit lower, hence the note above. The added panel gives vitamin D3 at 150 IU, vitamin E at 60mg, zinc at 24mg, iron at 4.5mg, manganese at 2.7mg, copper at 2.1mg and iodine at 0.35mg per kilo. The yeast supplies mannan-oligosaccharides at 0.1% to feed the gut flora. Cassia gum at 1900mg per kilo is the thickener that gives the jelly its set.

£2.47 a kilo, sold in boxes of 12 x 100g and 40 x 100g pouches.

How much a puppy needs shifts every few weeks as they grow, so treat the chart on the box as a starting point and let condition decide the rest. For a pup heading towards a 10kg adult it runs from around 550g a day up to 850g.