Royal Canin Giant Puppy review

This one comes out in our Average band, and the gap up to the Good band a typical puppy dry food reaches is a single step. Two things open it: a base that leans on wheat gluten and maize gluten to carry protein, and a set of meat entries that never name an animal. Transparency reads Poor and protein and processing Average, while nutritional balance reads Excellent.

Be clear about what the band is not saying. Protein converting to 37.0% of dry matter is a strong figure for a growth kibble, the trace mineral panel is dosed in full, and nothing in the analysis suggests a pup would struggle on it. The reading reflects how much the label tells you and what it is built from.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated poultry protein, wheat gluten*, rice, maize, maize flour, animal fats, wheat flour, beet pulp, hydrolysed animal proteins, minerals, maize gluten, 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 leads. The drying has taken the water out already, and the share the label declares reaches the kibble roughly as printed. No species is given. Poultry can mean chicken in one batch and turkey in the next, and that is the part that bites when you are hunting for the food your pup does not get on with.

Wheat gluten in second place is the entry to understand properly. It is a concentrated plant protein, inexpensive and useful for holding a kibble together, and together with the maize gluten further down it raises the protein analysis without a gram of it coming from meat. Protein converts to 37.0% of dry matter, a high number, but not all of that number is animal protein.

For a food aimed squarely at giant breed growth, there is a real absence here: no calcium percentage is printed on the label. A big breed feeding plan turns on that figure more than any other, and without it no claim about skeletal development stands up. Owners who want it are within their rights to ask the maker directly.

Moisture is not among the declared figures, so the dry matter conversions rest on the 8% normal for a kibble rather than on a printed value. Read them as close, not exact. On that basis carbohydrate works out at an estimated 37.8% of dry matter, a little under the 39.0% typical of a puppy dry food.

Growth thinking is parked at the list's end. Digestion gets fructo-oligo-saccharides, psyllium husks and seeds and hydrolysed yeast at 0.30%. An algal oil grown from Schizochytrium is the declared DHA source, and glucosamine from fermentation and hydrolysed cartilage make the joint pair. Every one of them appears without a dose, so their presence is all the label confirms.

The added panel makes up for some of that reticence. Vitamin A at 16500 IU and vitamin D3 at 1100 IU per kg sit alongside zinc at 128 mg, manganese at 47 mg and iron at 36 mg. Clinoptilolite appears among the technological additives at 10 g per kg.

£4.87 a kilo, sold in a 15kg bag.

Portions for a pup this size move week by week. The bag's guide is arranged around the weight your pup will finish at, spanning 45kg to 100kg. Follow it, keep an eye on how your pup is filling out, and do not set one amount and leave it alone.