Royal Canin Mini Puppy Chunks In Gravy review

Most wet puppy food reaches our Excellent band, since the category is a strong one, so an Average placing puts real distance between this pouch and its neighbours. Nutritional balance comes back Outstanding, with protein and processing and transparency both Average. The thread running through the weaker readings is how little the label identifies: no named meat, no named cereal, no meat share and no calcium.

That is worth separating from what is actually in the bowl. The analysis on the back of the pouch is respectable for growth, and the shortfall is in what a reader is allowed to verify rather than in the figures themselves.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and animal derivatives, oils and fats, cereals, derivatives of vegetable origin, minerals, yeasts.

Not one line on this ingredients list names an actual ingredient, since each is a legal category standing in for a whole family of them. Meat and animal derivatives covers the fleshy parts and the processing products of any warm blooded land animal, which spans the very best to the very ordinary, and nothing on the pouch narrows it down. Oils and fats, cereals and derivatives of vegetable origin work the same way, each standing for a whole family of possible ingredients.

There is one practical consequence to be clear about. A recipe written in these terms can change within its own wording from batch to batch, so a pup who reacts to something in it gives you nowhere to look. That makes this the wrong food to build a suspected intolerance around, though it says nothing about how well a settled pup will do on it.

The analysis is the more encouraging half of the label. Protein converts to 38.5% of dry matter and fat to 28.8%, both comfortable for growth, with ash at 9.1% showing a substantial mineral load behind them. Fibre is light at 4.8% of dry matter and carbohydrate lands at an estimated 18.8%, a little above the 13.6% typical of wet puppy food.

What the mineral panel never gives you is calcium. That figure earns its keep during growth more than at any other stage, and with none printed you cannot check the balance for yourself. Small breeds are considerably more forgiving on this point than large ones, which is part of what a small breed recipe is for, but the number still belongs on a puppy label.

The added panel is short and dosed per kilo: vitamin D3 at 140 IU, zinc at 15 mg, iron at 5 mg, copper at 2.4 mg, manganese at 1.5 mg and iodine at 0.3 mg. Clinoptilolite at 2 g is a mineral clay used in manufacture, and not a nutrient your pup draws on.

Energy works out at 93 kcal per 100g on our estimate, since the pouch declares none. That is a little under the 106 kcal typical of wet puppy food. Pouch counts will feel familiar to anyone who has fed wet before.

£9.65 a kilo, sold as a 12 x 85 g pouch pack.

Puppies eat to a moving target. Set the amount in the bowl by the shape of your pup and by the pack's growth chart, and keep adjusting it.