Pets Love Fresh Puppy: Simply Chicken review

Our scoring likes what this label does. A single animal, itemised right down to the heart and the liver, carries almost the whole recipe, the few plant entries are named, and the analysis is protein forward without piling on fat. Nutritional balance reads Outstanding, transparency Excellent, and both protein and processing and value read Good. The food lands in our Good band, while the typical fresh puppy recipe reads higher still in Outstanding.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken meat 80%, Chicken heart 5%, Chicken liver 5%, Chicory pulp, Cranberry powder, M.O.S, Vitamins & Minerals, Herbs (botanical mix)

The water is still in a fresh food when you open it, so the figures on the pack sit lower than a dried food's and mean rather more. Moisture is declared at 71.5%, and once it comes out of the sum the protein reads 56.1% of dry matter with fat at 21.1% and an estimated carbohydrate of 10.5%. For a puppy that is a well shaped plate: plenty of protein for tissue that is still being built, and fat kept short of the level that adds weight faster than the skeleton would like.

The organ entries are small and they matter. There is little you can put in a bowl that carries more nutrition than liver, and at 5% it brings the B vitamins, copper and vitamin A a growing dog draws on daily. A few percent is exactly the right share for it. Chicken heart at the same figure is working muscle, bringing the amino acid density that comes with a muscle that never rests.

Two prebiotics do the digestive work. Inulin comes from the chicory pulp, and it is the soluble fibre that keeps the large intestine's helpful bacteria fed. The added MOS comes from yeast cell walls and does much the same job. In a puppy food, whose owner will be watching every stool for the first month, that pairing is a sensible piece of design. Cranberry powder sits alongside them as the antioxidant note.

One number a puppy owner looks for is not on this label: no calcium figure is declared, so there is nothing here to read against a growth requirement, and none should be inferred. That gap is a small matter for a puppy heading for a small or medium adult size, because a complete food is built to meet the stage on its label. A large or giant breed is a different matter, since the calcium level through the growth months shapes how the skeleton develops. Ask the maker for the figure before the first delivery.

Little else is on the list, and that is deliberate. Vitamins and minerals appear as a single composition line with no dosed panel, and the herbs are described only as a botanical mix, so both are present without being spelled out. On a recipe otherwise this specific, they stand out as the two entries you cannot follow all the way down.

£8.99 a kilo, in 1kg and 600g packs.

There is no single daily figure worth quoting here, because a puppy's portion keeps moving. The label works from bodyweight instead, starting at 250 to 450 grams a day for a 10kg puppy and climbing from there. Feed to the growth chart in front of you and weigh your puppy every week or two. Adjust as the frame fills out, and never settle on one number for good.