Specific CPD-M Puppy Medium Breed review

This food sits in our Average band, while the typical puppy dry food lands in our Good band. The readings are uneven: transparency comes in Good, while protein and processing is the one that reads Poor. The gap to the typical mark is mostly construction. Cereal leads the label, part of the protein arrives from maize and an unnamed hydrolysate instead of the fish, and the analysis declares less than the stronger growth labels manage. None of that stops it doing its job for a pup that thrives on it; it simply gives the label fewer places to earn credit.

Ingredients, as declared: Wheat, fish meal, maize protein, pork fat, minerals, animal protein hydrolysate, beet pulp, vitamins and trace elements (including chelated trace elements), fish oil, egg powder, lysine, psyllium husk, methionine, threonine, tryptophan, rosemary extract. With natural antioxidants (tocopherols and vitamin C).

Wheat opens the list and fish meal follows it. Fish meal is a concentrated ingredient, fish with the water driven off before it is weighed, so it brings more protein to the recipe than second place suggests. Even so, the balance of the bowl tips towards cereal: estimated from the declared ingredient list, carbohydrate-carrying ingredients make up around 58.3% of the recipe as fed, with meat-derived ingredients at around 30.6%.

Maize protein and an animal protein hydrolysate top up the protein figure, one from a grain and one from an unnamed animal source. The run of added amino acids, lysine, methionine, threonine and tryptophan, is the tell of a recipe balanced by the numbers. Where the plant proteins fall short of what growth demands, the maker adds the missing pieces directly. It is a clinical way to build a puppy food, and Specific is a clinical sort of brand.

The digestive supporting cast is deliberate. Beet pulp gives a steady fibre that dogs tolerate well, and psyllium husk is the classic choice for keeping stools formed. You more often meet that pairing in sensitive-digestion recipes than in everyday puppy food. Egg powder adds a small dose of highly complete protein. The fish oil is there for omega-3 fats, and a growing brain and coat use plenty of them.

The trace elements include chelated forms, the type usually chosen for better absorption. Preservation is natural, handled by tocopherols with vitamin C and rosemary extract.

The published analysis is briefer than we would like: protein, fat, fibre and moisture, with no ash figure and no printed calcium. That is why no dry-matter workings appear on this page. It is also the main reason this label reads as middling on openness. A veterinary-channel maker will have the growth minerals formulated to standard; we would simply rather see them in print.

£5.39 a kilo, sold in 4kg, 7kg and 12kg bags.

Puppy portions shift with age and expected adult size. Feed to the guide on the bag and to your pup's waistline, and expect the numbers to move every few weeks while growth is quick.