Virbac Veterinary HPM Junior Special Medium review

Our reading puts this kibble in the Good band, level with the middle of the puppy dry field. Nutritional balance comes back Outstanding and transparency Excellent, with protein and processing and value both Good. No pillar is holding the others back.

The gap is between what the bowl delivers and what the label proves. For a growth food the analysis is a strong one, and the printed calcium figure is the sort of thing we like to find. The meat is described by group and never by animal, so unnamed poultry, poultry fats and hydrolysed proteins keep protein and processing from climbing higher.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated pork and poultry proteins; Rice; Poultry Fats; Peas; Lignocellulose; Hydrolysed pork and poultry proteins; Minerals; Dried (sugar) beet pulp; Fish oil; Linseed; Fructo-oligosaccharides; Psyllium fibre (Plantago (L.) spp.); Inactivated brewer's yeast; Inactivated Lactobacillus helveticus.

Two dehydrated proteins start the list, pork and poultry, and that dehydrated form is worth decoding. The water comes out in the drying, before the ingredient goes in, and what is declared carries through to the finished kibble largely as printed. Nothing much shrinks in production. The analysis agrees, with protein at 35.0% as fed and 38.5% of dry matter.

The catch is in the naming. Pork is identified and poultry is not. Behind that word sits chicken or turkey, duck or goose, in whatever combination a batch allows. The poultry fats and the hydrolysed proteins repeat the same ambiguity. For a pup with a simple preference this is a non-issue. Pork is still unusual enough in a British bowl to be worth a look when your dog has worked through most of the common meats. For a formal elimination trial, the label does not hand you enough to work with.

The starch comes from rice and peas, and by kibble standards the load is light. Carbohydrate converts to 26.9% of dry matter where the puppy dry field's middle sits at 39.0%. Fat is generous at 20.9% of dry matter, and the 396 kcal per 100g is a measured declaration rather than our own estimate, which is not something every growth bag offers.

No figure on a growth label does more work than calcium, and this one is printed at 1.43% of dry matter. That falls where a growing skeleton can use it. The maker aims the bag at medium breed puppies and that number suits the brief neatly.

We would happily see lignocellulose replaced. As a purified plant fibre powder it bulks a diet out and adds almost nothing nutritionally. Dried beet pulp and psyllium husk sit alongside it, and both bring more to the bowl. Fructo-oligosaccharides and an inactivated Lactobacillus helveticus round out the gut side, with inactivated brewer's yeast adding natural B vitamins.

The omega fats behind a growing coat and brain come from fish oil and from linseed, a marine source paired with a plant one. The added vitamin and trace mineral panel is dosed in print throughout. It stretches to choline at 3000 mg per kilogram and taurine at 150 mg per kilogram, neither of which a puppy food is obliged to include.

Sold in 3kg and 12kg bags, at £6.17 a kilo.

What a pup needs in its first months and what it needs half a year later are two different numbers. No fixed daily amount holds for a growing dog. Weigh the amount from the chart on the bag, and let your pup's waistline do the fine tuning from there.