Wainwright's Puppy Dry Food: Turkey & Rice review

All three recipes land in our Good band, level with the typical puppy dry food. The base is identical across the range, so the meat makes the difference: salmon and turkey are each declared at 36%, lamb at 26%. That ten point gap in meat share shows up in the protein figures and in the placings.

Transparency reads Outstanding on all three bags. Nutritional balance and value come back Good, protein and processing Average, which is a fair account of a well declared recipe on a conventional cereal base. The lamb bag reads the same way on every pillar.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey (36%) (Dried Turkey 31%, Freshly Prepared Turkey 5%), Rice (26%), Whole Grain Barley (10%), Maize Protein, Rapeseed Oil, Whole Ground Oats (4.5%), Beet Pulp (4%), Dried Peas (3% equivalent to 12.5% Peas), Linseed (2%), Dried Carrots (1% equivalent to 8% Carrots), Seaweed (0.2%), Yucca Extract (0.02%)

The meat declarations follow the same pattern in every bag: a headline share split into a dried portion and a freshly prepared one. Dried meat comes with its water removed already, so the dried figure survives into the kibble at close to its printed value. The fresh figure shrinks considerably in production. The dried share is where to look first.

Each recipe also keeps to a single animal. There is no fish oil in the lamb and turkey bags and no second meat in any of the three. A pup being held to one protein can be moved between them one at a time without the label working against you. The added fat is rapeseed oil throughout, a plant oil and not an animal one, which helps that claim stand up.

The base is the same in all three: rice at 26%, whole grain barley, whole ground oats at 4.5% and maize protein. The cereals cook down to a starch most puppies digest comfortably. Maize protein is the entry to read with a raised eyebrow, since it lifts the declared protein without offering what an animal protein offers.

Beet pulp and dried peas at 3%, noted as equivalent to 12.5% peas, look after the fibre while adding a little plant protein, and linseed at 2% brings plant omega 3 for coat and skin. Dried carrots at 1%, given as equivalent to 8% carrots, and seaweed at 0.2% close the plant side, the seaweed carrying iodine and a broad mineral spread.

Yucca extract at 0.02% is the last named entry in every recipe, a traditional inclusion credited with taking the edge off stool odour. The same vitamin and trace element panel appears on all three, doses included. Selenium comes as sodium selenite, the more common and less well absorbed of the two permitted forms.

The gap common to all three is calcium. None of the bags prints a figure. Since the range is sold for puppies of every adult size, a large or giant breed owner is missing the single most useful line on a growth label. Nothing in the recipes suggests a problem. A large breed claim cannot rest on a figure the label never prints. Ask the maker for it before you commit a big pup to any of them.

The Turkey & Rice bag carries the range's largest barley inclusion and its lowest starch conversion. Turkey is declared at 36%, 31% of it dried and 5% freshly prepared, and whole grain barley climbs to 10% here against 9% in the other two bags. Protein reads 29.5% and converts to 32.4% of dry matter. Fibre tops the range at 3.0% as fed and 3.3% of dry matter, and carbohydrate converts to 42.4% of dry matter. Turkey is the mildest of the three meats and the easiest starting point for a pup with an unsettled stomach. It places in our Good band.

£3.33 a kilo across the range, sold in 2kg and 15kg bags.

Puppy portions climb and then settle again as growth slows. Take the bag's chart as your reference and revise it as your dog's shape changes. The guides run from 30g a day for the smallest puppies to 875g a day at the far end of the largest chart.