Tesco Puppy Dry review

This bag sits in our Average band, a step under the Good band where the typical puppy dry food lands, with protein and processing reading Poor, and nutritional balance and transparency Average. The reasons sit almost entirely with the naming, and hardly at all with the analysis. The meat is not attributed to a species beyond a declared 4% chicken, and neither the grain nor the fat is identified. The mineral figures a growth diet is normally read on are not printed. The declared protein and energy are unremarkable rather than poor, and the notes below keep the two things apart.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, Meat and Animal Derivatives (28% including 4% Chicken in the Bone-shaped Kibble*), Oils and Fats, Vegetables (4% Peas in the Brown Barrel-shaped Kibble), Minerals, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Yeasts. *Bone-shaped Kibble: typically 60% of product, Brown barrel-shaped Kibble: typically 20% of product

The list opens with cereals, a word that under European labelling covers any grain at all, from an excellent one to the plainest thing in the mill. The bag does not say which, and it does not have to. Meat and animal derivatives at 28% works the same way, taking in everything from prime muscle meat right down to the parts of a carcass a butcher would not sell. Only 4% of it is attributed here, as chicken in the bone shaped kibble.

Oils and fats and derivatives of vegetable origin follow the same pattern further down. None of this means the contents are poor, and a large maker may well be using perfectly decent material. It means you are being asked to take it on trust, and that a pup with a suspected intolerance cannot be worked around on a label like this one.

The bag holds two kibbles made to different recipes. The bone shaped one is typically three fifths of the product and carries the 4% chicken, and the brown barrel shaped one is typically a fifth and carries 4% peas. That accounts for four fifths of what is in the bag, with the remainder unattributed.

The declared analysis is ordinary rather than alarming. Protein at 25.0% and fat at 12.0% as fed convert to 27.2% and 13.0% of dry matter, using an assumed 8% moisture since none is declared. Carbohydrate then works out at an estimated 48.4% of dry matter against the 39.0% typical of a puppy dry food. That is a starchier bowl than most growth kibbles serve. Energy is declared at 365 kcal per 100g, close to the 376 typical.

This label's strongest suit is its additive panel. Vitamin E is dosed at 70mg per kilo, zinc at 100mg, iron at 60mg, manganese at 50mg and copper at 8mg, with iodine and selenium both named and dosed. That is a fully specified micronutrient package. Ash converts to 8.7% of dry matter, so the minerals are certainly there in quantity. No calcium figure is broken out of that total, and for a large breed pup that is the one line worth having.

£1.17 a kilo, sold in a 3kg bag.

On our own energy estimate, a 10kg pup aged between 4 and 12 months eats roughly 194 to 237 grams a day. A growing dog will not hold that figure for long. Take the portion from the growth guide, then look at it again as the weeks pass. The same scoop from the first bag to the last will not do.