Salters Puppy review

Our reading places Salters Puppy in our Good band, which is where the typical puppy dry food also settles, and it lands a shade under that middle mark. Protein and processing reads Good on the strength of the chicken meals and the named fat, nutritional balance and value read Good alongside it, and only transparency comes back Average. The reason has less to do with what goes into the bag than with how little this label commits to print.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken Meat Meal, Spray Dried Chicken Meal, Ground Maize, Round Grain Rice, Chicken Fat, Maize Gluten Meal, Dried Whole Egg, Dried Sugar Beet Pulp, Cellulose Fibre, Full Fat Linseed, Sunflower Meal, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Yeast (Autolyzed), Natural Seaweed, Vitamins and Minerals.

Chicken meat meal and spray dried chicken meal open the recipe, and both are worth decoding. Meal arrives dry, its water gone before mixing, so a kilo of it carries far more protein into the finished kibble than a kilo of fresh meat would. Chicken fat follows further down, named to the same bird and not left as an anonymous animal fat.

How much of each there is, the label does not say. Not one ingredient carries an inclusion percentage, so the meat share has to be taken on trust rather than read off the pack, and that reticence is the biggest thing holding this label back.

Ground maize and round grain rice carry the starch. This is a conventional grain-inclusive recipe. Maize gluten meal sits behind them. Milling maize produces it, and it is used to lift the protein figure with plant protein, which dogs handle less easily than meat protein. A pup already prone to itchy skin is the one to keep an eye on with it. Dried whole egg, at the other end of the scale, is about as digestible as animal protein gets.

Fibre arrives from two directions. Dried sugar beet pulp is the familiar one. It is soluble and insoluble fibre together, gentle enough that most puppy digestion takes it without complaint. Cellulose fibre is the purified kind, essentially plant fibre stripped back to bulk with almost no calories in it, and while it does its job, fibre from whole ingredients reads better on a label.

The nicest part of this label is its tail. Full fat linseed brings plant omega 3 with its own fibre attached, and extra virgin olive oil is an unusual thing to find in a kibble, with real benefits for coat and heart. Autolysed yeast adds palatability, while natural seaweed carries iodine and a broad spread of minerals with it.

The analysis gives protein 27.8% and fat 18.0%, which convert to 30.2% and 19.6% of dry matter on the declared 8.0% moisture. Energy works out at an estimated 380 kcal per 100g, near enough the 376 typical of a puppy dry food. Carbohydrate is estimated at 40.4% of dry matter against a typical 39.0%. Calcium is the number that does the most work in a growth food. At 1.41% of dry matter it falls inside the range a puppy skeleton is built on, and that is why the toy to giant span on this label is a fair claim.

No additives panel is published, and that is a gap. What the brand does state, in the same words on every product page, is that it uses no artificial colours, antioxidants or preservatives. The food keeps instead through drying and a natural extract of vitamin E.

£6.23 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 15kg bags.

Puppy portions climb week by week and then ease off as growth slows. Weigh what goes into the bowl, look at the pack's growth chart, and watch how your pup is filling out.