Royal Canin Maxi Starter review

Our bands read this as Average, with the typical adult dry food a level up in Good. The analysis is not what holds it back. Protein converts to 32.6% of dry matter, fat to 23.9% and estimated carbohydrate to only 32.4%, well under the 46.2% usual for adult dry food, a rich and meat-leaning shape for a kibble. What sits against that is the ingredients list: rice comes first, the bird is never named, and the fats and hydrolysed proteins carry no species. Protein and processing reads Poor with transparency only Average. Judged as the thing it actually is, a short-stay food for weaning puppies and a nursing mother, it is well built for the work.

Ingredients, as declared: Rice, dehydrated poultry protein, animal fats, wheat gluten*, maize, hydrolysed animal proteins, minerals, beet pulp, soya oil, vegetable fibres, fish oil, psyllium husks and seeds, fructo-oligo-saccharides, hydrolysed yeast (source of manno-oligo-saccharides and betaglucans) (0.30%), algal oil Schizochytrium sp. (source of DHA), butyric acid salt, marigold meal.

Rice opens the list, which on a weaning food is a defensible choice. Rice is the cereal that unsettles the fewest dogs, and a puppy meeting solid food for the first time has enough to contend with already. Dehydrated poultry protein follows it. Its water was taken out first, so most of what that entry declares is protein that reaches the finished kibble. The word poultry still covers any domestic bird, which is the recurring limitation of this maker's labels.

Fat is the headline number and it is doing the real work here. At 22.0% as fed and 23.9% of dry matter it carries energy to 417 kcal per 100g. A nursing mother needs that when she is feeding a large litter and cannot physically eat enough volume to keep up. Estimated carbohydrate falls to 29.8% as a result, a low figure for a dry food and the reverse of the usual pattern in this range.

The small print is at its most interesting on the gut entries. Hydrolysed yeast is declared at 0.30%, bringing manno-oligo-saccharides and betaglucans, both of which help settle a gut. A butyric acid salt appears further down. Butyrate is the fatty acid that cells lining the colon use as their own fuel, so it is a sensible thing to hand a puppy whose digestion is still assembling itself. Beet pulp, vegetable fibres, psyllium husks and fructo-oligo-saccharides fill in the rest of the fibre picture, though crude fibre stays low at 1.8%.

DHA comes from algal oil rather than from the fish oil alone, and that matters more on a puppy food than on an adult one. DHA is the omega 3 most closely tied to brain and eye development in the first weeks. Taking it from a grown marine algae delivers it in the form a puppy can use straight away, with no need for a young body to convert it out of a plant oil.

Ash is declared at 8.4%, a high figure for a dry food and the ordinary signature of a recipe carrying extra minerals for growth. The added nutrition itself is fully dosed. Zinc runs at 136 mg, manganese at 55 mg and iron at 42 mg, with copper at 13 mg, iodine at 4.2 mg and selenium at 0.06 mg per kilo. Vitamin A at 18500 IU and vitamin D3 at 1200 IU sit above them, a generous vitamin D declaration and a consistent one for a growth recipe. The calcium figure is the one thing the pack does not print. It is the number a large-breed owner cares about most, because growing giants are the dogs most sensitive to taking on too much of it.

Wheat gluten sits fourth. It is a concentrated plant protein, there to lift the protein figure alongside the meat. It is a perfectly functional ingredient and a common one. Just know it is there, because the whole of that 30.0% does not arrive from the bird.

£5.79 a kilo, sold in 4kg and 15kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 201 grams a day of it at £1.17, on roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Treat that as a benchmark only, because a growing or nursing dog needs a good deal more than a maintenance ration.