Tuggs Chicken Coup review

Our reading puts Chicken Coup in our Outstanding band, sitting comfortably above the middle of the fresh field, and the middle of that field is itself an Outstanding place to be. Protein and processing, nutritional balance and transparency all read Outstanding, so nothing on the label is letting it down; fresh food simply sets a high bar for its own. Take away the 72.5% water and the picture is a rich one, with protein at 47.6% of dry matter and fat at 38.5%. That profile is built for a dog with somewhere to put the energy.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken 45% (Heart 15%; Trimming 20%; Liver 10%), Fresh Insect (20%), Carrot (9%), Sweet Potato (8.3%), Broccoli (9.5%), Quinoa (4%), Sunflower Oil (1.5%), Minerals (0.5%), Brewer's Yeast (1%), Salmon Oil (0.20%), Kelp Powder 0.5%, Chia Seeds 0.5%, Ingredient highlights Chicken Trimming · Chicken Liver · Chicken Heart · Insects · Sweet Potato · Minerals · Carrots · Brewer's Yeast · Quinoa · Salmon Oil · Broccoli · Sunflower Oil · Chia Seeds · Kelp Powder

Water stays in a gently cooked food, and this pouch declares 72.5% moisture. That is why an as-fed protein of 13.1% and fat of 10.6% look modest until they are converted, at which point they read 47.6% and 38.5% of dry matter. Low temperature cooking, with no high heat extrusion, is what leaves the ingredients looking like ingredients.

Chicken accounts for 45% of the pouch, and the label opens that block up: trimming at 20%, heart at 15% and liver at 10%. Heart is solid muscle, not an offcut, and liver carries about as much vitamin A, B12 and copper as a dog will meet anywhere. Naming their shares is worth far more to a reader than one chicken percentage.

Fresh insect at 20% is the second protein and a serious one. It is a protein almost no dog has been exposed to before, which is exactly what makes a novel protein useful, and it is far lighter on land and water than conventional livestock. The one gap on an otherwise fully specified label is that the insect is not named to species.

The vegetables are more generous than the analysis suggests. Broccoli sits at 9.5%, carrot at 9% and sweet potato at 8.3%, with quinoa at 4%, and yet the carbohydrate estimate converts to only 5.2% of dry matter. The reason is the fat: a rich recipe leaves less room in the analysis for starch, which is why this pouch is both vegetable-led on the list and very low in carbohydrate on paper.

Small entries fill out the label. Sunflower oil at 1.5% is a mild oil high in natural vitamin E, salmon oil at 0.20% adds the long chain omega 3s, and chia seeds at 0.5% contribute the plant form. Kelp powder at 0.5% supplies iodine, brewer's yeast at 1% brings a spread of B vitamins, and the mineral premix rounds it off at 0.5%.

The added panel is printed per kilogram, with vitamin A at 2500 IU, vitamin D3 at 250 IU and vitamin E at 20mg ahead of the trace elements. Alongside them the label publishes a calcium to phosphorus ratio of 1.2:1, useful information as far as it goes, although no calcium figure is given as a percentage of the food.

Chicken Coup is sold in 300g, 500g and 700g pouches, boxed in fives, tens or fifteens. Subscription plans portion to the individual dog and not to a fixed box.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works through roughly 494 grams a day, taking about 840 kcal a day from the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. That is the smallest daily amount of the three Tuggs recipes, because it is the richest of them. A growing puppy is fed differently again, to its own growth curve and not to a fixed daily figure.