Royal Canin Giant Junior review

This one settles in our Average band, one rung below the Good band the typical puppy dry food occupies. The naming drives the reading here and the analysis does not: animal fats, hydrolysed animal proteins and dehydrated poultry protein are all category terms. That holds transparency and protein and processing to Average, with nutritional balance reading Good.

The numbers themselves are ordinary rather than poor. Carbohydrate converts to an estimated 39.2% of dry matter where the typical puppy dry food sits at 39.0%, and energy runs a shade ahead at 391 kcal per 100g against 376. What a label reading cannot capture is the feeding research behind a range this widely used, and that is worth holding alongside the band.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated poultry protein, maize, maize flour, rice, animal fats, wheat gluten*, wheat flour, beet pulp, hydrolysed animal proteins, minerals, soya oil, yeasts products, fish oil, fructo-oligo-saccharides, psyllium husks and seeds, hydrolysed yeast (source of manno-oligo-saccharides and betaglucans) (0.30%), algal oil Schizochytrium sp. (source of DHA), Yucca Schidigera juice, marigold meal, glucosamine from fermentation, hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin).

Dehydrated poultry protein comes first on this list. Dried meat has lost its water before weighing, so the number on the bag holds good in the finished kibble. What it does not tell you is the bird. Chicken, turkey, duck and the rest all count as poultry. Further down, the hydrolysed animal proteins name nothing at all. The recipe is competent to feed and hard to read.

Maize, maize flour, rice, wheat gluten and wheat flour do the structural work, a grain-forward base of the sort that has kept this kibble consistent for years. Concentrated plant protein is what the gluten entry brings. Part of the 31.0% declared protein therefore comes from cereal, not from the bird.

Here the label prints the one figure a giant breed growth food most needs to give. A very large frame wants calcium inside a set window while its bones are still lengthening, and calcium here converts to 1.41% of dry matter, right in it. Rearing big pups goes wrong on calcium more often than on anything else, so seeing the figure printed and in range is genuinely reassuring.

Fish oil and an algal oil grown from Schizochytrium make up the omega side. The algal entry is declared as a source of DHA, the fatty acid a pup draws on for early brain and eye development. Glucosamine from fermentation and hydrolysed cartilage close the list on joints. None of them carries a dose. Read them as inclusions, not as measured support.

Four entries cover digestion: beet pulp, psyllium husks and seeds, then fructo-oligo-saccharides and hydrolysed yeast at 0.30%. The yeast is there as a declared source of betaglucans and manno-oligo-saccharides. At 1.4% of dry matter, crude fibre is on the modest side. Treat it as gentle help, not as a high-fibre recipe.

Nothing is missing from the declared analysis: protein at 31.0%, fat at 16.0%, ash at 7.6% and moisture at 8.0% are all printed. Plenty of labels manage less, and having the four means the dry matter conversion rests on real figures. The added nutritional panel is dosed throughout, from vitamin A at 16500 IU down to selenium at 0.06 mg per kg.

£4.87 a kilo, sold in a 15kg bag.

A giant pup's daily amount climbs steeply while the growing lasts, so no single figure holds for long. The bag's own chart is set out by adult weight, from 45kg up to 100kg. Feed to that, adjusting as your pup's shape tells you.