Pedigree Puppy Junior Dry: With Poultry & Vegetables review

The middle of the puppy dry shelf sits in our Good band, and this range falls some way short: the plain and beef bags read Poor, the poultry bag Average. Protein and processing reads Poor right across the range, nutritional balance and transparency fall between Poor and Good depending on the bag, and the reasons run together. Cereals lead every recipe, and the meat sits under a category term with 4% of a named animal inside it. The oils and fats go unnamed on two of the three bags, and protein tops out at 29.7% of dry matter on the plain version. None of that makes the food unsafe or incomplete, and it rears a great many puppies perfectly well. It simply declares less, and delivers less meat, than the foods sitting above it.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals*, Meat and Animal Derivatives (including Poultry 4%), Oils and Fats, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (including Dried Beet Pulp 3%), Minerals, Vegetables* (including Dried Peas and Carrots mix 0.7%, Equivalent to Peas and Carrots mix 4%), Yeast (including Brewer's Yeast 0.4%), * Natural ingredients, Cereals*, Meat and Animal Derivatives (including Poultry 4%), Oils and Fats, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (including Dried Beet Pulp* 3%), Minerals, Vegetables* (including Dried Peas and Carrots Mix 0.7%, Equivalent to Peas and Carrots mix 4%), Yeast (including Brewer's Yeast 0.4%), *Natural ingredients

Cereals lead all three recipes, and only the plain bag pins any of them down, declaring rice at 4%. The category can cover anything from good whole grains to low-grade milling by-products, and because the type is not fixed the maker is free to change the grain from batch to batch. That is the single biggest reason this range reads the way it does.

Meat and animal derivatives follows. On the plain bag the category is quantified at 30%, with chicken declared at 4% of it. The beef and poultry bags name their headline animal at 4% and leave the rest of the category unquantified. Under European law the term covers the fleshy parts of any warm-blooded land animal along with the products of processing a carcass, which is why the allergen picture for this range is so wide.

The fat is where the three bags part company. The plain version names sunflower oil at 0.4% inside its oils and fats. Sunflower oil is a decent one, easy on saturated fat and carrying vitamin E naturally. The two flavoured bags declare oils and fats with nothing named at all, so the source cannot be read off the label.

The flavoured bags do bring a few named extras. Dried beet pulp at 3% supplies gentle fibre. A dried mix of peas and carrots at 0.7% is declared as equivalent to 4% of the fresh version, and brewer's yeast comes in at 0.4%. Brewer's yeast has real merit. Few natural ingredients carry the B vitamin group better, and it is a complete protein too, though at 0.4% it works as a garnish.

The plain bag declares its moisture at 8.0%, so its dry matter figures are firm: protein at 29.7%, fat at 15.1% and carbohydrate at 44.6%. The two flavoured bags print no moisture at all, so their dry matter readings rest on the standard 8% assumption applied when a label leaves the figure out. On that basis they come out lower still, at 27.2% protein and 50.1% carbohydrate.

Calcium is where a puppy owner should look hardest, and only one of these three bags helps. The plain version prints it, and at 1.41% of dry matter it sits where growth wants it. The beef and poultry bags print no calcium figure, yet all three are sold from toy right up to giant. A large breed pup on either flavoured bag is being reared without the number that matters most on view.

The added panel is complete and ordinary. The plain bag carries vitamin D3 at 1500 IU, vitamin E at 100 IU, zinc at 89mg, manganese at 31.5mg, copper at 9mg, iodine at 2.3mg and selenium at 0.2mg per kilo. Antioxidants and colourants are declared alongside. The flavoured bags swap the colourants for preservatives and add vitamin B2 and biotin. Selenium comes as sodium selenite throughout, the more commonly used of the two permitted forms, in tiny and routine doses, though the organic form is the better taken up of the two.

The poultry version is the same recipe with poultry named at 4% in place of beef, and it is the one sold in the larger 3kg and 12kg bags. Poultry as a term covers any domestic fowl without saying which, so it is a step less specific again than the beef bag. Its declared fibre runs a little higher at 2.3% and its ash a little lower at 7.1%. Vitamin B2 comes in at 10.7mg and biotin at 0.15mg per kilo, and like the beef bag it prints neither moisture nor calcium. Energy matches at 369 kcal per 100g.

£2.25 a kilo for the two flavoured bags. Across the range the bag sizes are 1.4kg, 3kg, 10kg and 12kg.

The amount a growing dog wants keeps changing, so read the bag's chart against the adult size you expect and adjust every couple of weeks. For a pup headed towards a 20kg adult, that chart reaches 245g to 270g a day on the plain bag.