Royal Canin Miniature Schnauzer Puppy review

This one lands in our Average band, a step under the Good band held by the middle of the puppy dry field. The pillars split: nutritional balance reads Good, protein and processing reads Average, and transparency reads Poor.

The recipe is not badly aimed at the job in front of it, and energy at 376 kcal per 100g is exactly the category norm. What the score follows is how much a label declares as well as what it delivers. This one leaves the species behind its meat, its fats and its hydrolysed protein entirely open, and builds the middle of the bag from maize and wheat fractions.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated poultry protein, maize, vegetable protein isolate*, rice, wheat flour, animal fats, wheat, maize flour, maize gluten, hydrolysed animal proteins, chicory pulp, minerals, fish oil, soya oil, fructo-oligo-saccharides (0.34%), psyllium husks and seeds, hydrolysed yeast (source of manno-oligo-saccharides), borage oil, yeasts extracts (source of betaglucans), marigold extract (source of lutein).

The first named ingredient is dehydrated poultry protein, a dried meat that brings its protein through to the kibble without the water fresh meat carries. The frustration is the word poultry, which stands for any domestic fowl and lets the bird change with supply. For most pups that is a non issue; for one with a suspected intolerance it removes the only useful clue.

Behind it the recipe leans on cereals in several forms. Maize comes ahead of rice, then wheat flour, wheat, more maize and maize gluten, with a vegetable protein isolate marked by the label's own asterisk sitting third. Maize gluten in particular is there to raise the protein reading with plant protein, and dogs make less of it than of protein from an animal.

The fibre thinking is the nicest thing on this list. Chicory pulp brings inulin, a soluble fibre that the useful gut bacteria live on, and psyllium husks and seeds add another soluble fibre alongside it. The prebiotic side is rounded out by a hydrolysed yeast and fructo-oligo-saccharides at 0.34%.

Fats get more care than the vague animal fats entry suggests, since fish oil and borage oil both appear further down. Borage oil is a strong source of gamma linolenic acid, the reason it appears in recipes written around skin and coat. A schnauzer's furnishings take some looking after.

As fed, protein is 30.0% and fat 14.0%, which converts to 32.6% and 15.2% of dry matter. Energy is declared at 376 kcal per 100g. No moisture is printed, so those conversions rest on the standard 8% assumption for a kibble rather than a declared figure, and carbohydrate works out at 41.6% of dry matter on the same basis.

Calcium is absent from the panel. The practical risk here is small: this is a food for a breed finishing around 6 kg, and small breed skeletons are far less sensitive to a calcium excess than large breed ones. It is still the figure a growth label ought to carry.

The added panel is generous and printed line by line: vitamin A at 31000 IU, D3 at 800 IU and E at 620 mg per kilo. Then zinc at 130 mg, manganese at 50 mg, iron at 39 mg, copper at 12 mg, iodine at 3.9 mg and selenium at 0.06 mg. L-carnitine at 50 mg helps turn fat into usable energy, and yucca extract at 125 mg is included for stool odour.

£9.16 a kilo, sold in a 1.5 kg bag.

The bag keys its guide to expected adult weight. For a schnauzer finishing at 6 kg it starts at 112 g a day, peaks at 137 g and eases back to 97 g as growth slows. Weigh each meal out, because a pup this size notices every extra gram.