Raw Pet Foods Puppy's Choice review

This recipe sits in our Outstanding band, which is the company the typical puppy raw food keeps, and raw for growing dogs is a demanding field to stand up in. The meat share, the named organ meats and a plant tail kept deliberately small are what earn it that place.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 80%, Carrots 7% Ox Heart 4%, Green leaf 3% Ox liver 2%, Ox kidney 2%, Butternut 2%, Kelp, flaxseed oil 1%

The recipe is built on chicken at 80%. At that inclusion it carries bone as well as meat, which is where a raw puppy food finds its calcium and phosphorus. Most young digestions take chicken easily. The one caveat attached to it anywhere is that being fed so widely makes it the meat dogs most commonly become intolerant to later on.

The offal is bovine. Heart takes 4%, and liver and kidney take 2% each. Liver is the single most nutrient-dense thing on this list, bringing vitamin A, copper and B vitamins in quantity. In a recipe with no vitamin premix behind it, that is genuine work and not a flourish.

The plant side is carrots at 7%, green leaf at 3% and butternut at 2%, and kelp with flaxseed oil share the final 1%. Carrot brings beta carotene and gentle fibre, kelp supplies iodine and trace minerals, and flaxseed adds plant omega 3 fats. Not one of them is in there for bulk.

The analysis suits a growing dog well: protein converting to 52.0% of dry matter, fat to 30.4% and carbohydrate to nothing at all. Ash at 12.4% of dry matter points to a healthy quantity of ground bone. That ash figure is the closest the label comes to telling you about minerals. A calcium declaration it is not, so a giant breed owner has a reason to pick up the phone.

£5.33 a kilo.

Raw Pet Foods guides by bodyweight. A 5kg dog is given 100 to 150 grams a day, a 40kg dog 800 to 1200 grams, so a puppy's portion moves up the table as it fills out.