Rocco Junior: Poultry, Chicken Hearts & Rice review

We have not put a score on the Rocco Junior range, and the reason is a straightforward one. A fair score needs a label that declares enough to assess, and this range's labelling stops at the flavour names, the analysis and the additives, without a full ingredient list. Rather than mark the food down for what it leaves unsaid, we leave it unscored and let the declared numbers speak for themselves. They are all set out on this page, and they are worth reading.

What Rocco declares here is briefer than the itemised lists some makers print: flavour names, a nutritional analysis and a dosed additives panel. The names still tell you a fair amount. Hearts feature in two of the recipes, and heart is honest working muscle, among the more nourishing cuts an animal offers. Rice appears by name in three of the four, playing the small supporting role wet recipes usually give it.

With no list to read, the analysis does the talking, and it says meat. Protein converts to between 48.2% and 52.0% of dry matter across the four varieties, while estimated carbohydrate lands between 6.5% and 12.7% of dry matter, where the typical wet food runs at 15.8%. Figures in that shape come from animal ingredients doing the work.

On a growth food, calcium is the figure to check first, and Rocco declares it on every recipe, converting to between 1.18% and 1.3% of dry matter. That sits inside the range growing dogs need, larger breeds included. Oversupply is the classic mistake in big-breed rearing, so seeing the figure printed and in range is a real comfort.

The added vitamin and mineral panel is short, and every line on it carries a dose per kilo. The doses are vitamin D3 at 200 IU, vitamin E at 20 IU, zinc at 25mg, manganese at 1.4mg, iodine at 0.75mg, copper at 1mg and biotin at 300mcg. A meat-led wet food already has a good deal of its micronutrition in the meat itself, so a panel this modest can be enough.

Poultry with chicken hearts and rice, and one of the two recipes listed for adult dogs as well as puppies, across every breed size. It is the gentlest of the four at 90 kcal per 100g, and its calcium is the highest in the range at 1.3% of dry matter.

£2.76 a kilo across all four varieties. Each comes in 400g and 800g sizes, sold in packs of six, with 24-packs of both sizes available.

As a guide, take about 840 kcal a day for an adult dog of 15kg in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £2.30 a day on the turkey variety and £2.58 a day on the chicken hearts variety, the two listed for adults. That is 832 and 933 grams a day respectively. A daily cost figure is of limited use on a puppy. Portions move quickly with age and with expected adult weight, so feed to the growth chart and let the waistline settle it.