Royal Canin Gastrointestinal Puppy Ultra Soft Mousse review

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry by-products, pork by-products, pork gelatine, rice flour, powder cellulose, minerals, hydrolysed poultry byproducts, fish oil*, caseinate, yeasts and part thereof, pork blood products, marigold meal. Highly digestible protein sources: 46.2%. *Highly digestible fat sources: 0.4%.

Poultry by-products head the label with pork by-products behind them, then pork gelatine and rice flour. Royal Canin prints two figures: highly digestible protein sources at 46.2%, and asterisked fat sources at 0.4%. Both describe how the raw materials were chosen, not how much meat went in. The very soft texture is the other half of the design, since a mousse can be syringed or spooned into a pup with no interest in chewing.

Two entries deserve a second look on a young dog with a sensitive gut. Caseinate is a milk protein, so dairy is in this recipe even though the pack does not say the word. Hydrolysed poultry by-products sit alongside the whole poultry entry, both of them naming a category instead of a bird, which leaves chicken, turkey, duck and goose open. Fish oil brings a fish element too, without adding fish as a meat.

Powdered cellulose supplies fibre that mostly stays intact through the gut, pork blood products add colour and protein, yeasts and part thereof are in the mix, and marigold meal closes things out. Minerals are declared as a block near the top, which is where the calcium in a growth recipe comes from.

Moisture is declared at a high 78.5%, and once it is out of the sum, protein reads 46.5% of dry matter and fat 27.0%. Crude fibre is at 4.2%, crude ash at 9.8% and only 12.5% is left as estimated carbohydrate. Energy is 94 kcal per 100g. Calcium works out at 1.58% of dry matter, a figure worth quoting to your vet if the patient is a fast growing large breed pup, because that is the nutrient growth plans watch most closely.

The added panel names vitamin D3 at 210 IU, vitamin E at 180mg and vitamin C at 95mg, with taurine at 1.2g. Then iron at 5.6mg, iodine at 0.25mg, copper at 2mg, manganese at 1.7mg and zinc at 17mg per kilogram. Clinoptilolite at 2g is the technological additive. Portions for a puppy on a recovery diet move with weight and appetite week by week, so take the amount from the vet supervising the recovery rather than from any table.

It comes in 195g servings, singly or twelve to a box.