Webbox Naturals Puppy Paté review

This one lands in our Good band, one step under the typical wet puppy food, which sits up in Excellent. The analysis is not the reason for that. Protein at 50.0% of dry matter and fat at 26.3% are respectable growth numbers, and nutritional balance reads Outstanding on the back of them.

What pulls it down is how little the label commits to. The main ingredient is a category, the vegetables are a category and the plant derivatives are a category too, so a buyer cannot tell which animals or which crops went into the tin. On a food that will be a growing pup's staple, that counts heavily against it.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (55%, of which 5% Chicken, 5% Liver)*, Vegetables (Carrots 4%)*, Minerals, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (Inulin 0.1%) *, Supplemented levels added at the time of manufacture, *natural ingredient

No animal is named at the head of the list. What sits there instead is a category: meat and animal derivatives at 55%, with chicken at 5% and liver at 5% picked out inside it. In law that heading stretches across almost any warm blooded land animal, and what goes in can be very good material or very plain. Nothing on the tin tells you which end of that range you are being given. One maker will use it to keep a recipe private, another because the material moves about, and this label does not say which applies.

The named parts are worth having. Liver is remarkably nutrient dense, generous in B vitamins, vitamin A, copper and selenium and easy to digest. Its presence at 5% is a small but real plus. Chicken at the same level is highly palatable and gentle on most young digestions.

Vegetables at large cover carrots at 4%, and derivatives of vegetable origin carry inulin at 0.1%. Inulin is a prebiotic drawn from chicory root and does useful work on gut bacteria. The heading it sits under could equally cover a range of other material, and the tin does not narrow it down.

This label is at its best in the analysis. Protein converts to 50.0% of dry matter with fat at 26.3%, ash at 10.5% and carbohydrate estimated at 10.6%. That starch load is leaner than the 13.6% typical of a wet puppy food. At 91 kcal per 100g the energy is on the modest side, so portions run a little larger than the category average.

The added panel is short and dosed in print: vitamin D3, vitamin E and biotin, with zinc, manganese and copper behind them. No added vitamin A is declared, which is unusual on a growth food, although the liver in the recipe is itself a rich natural source of it. No calcium figure appears anywhere, and a big breed owner would check that line before any other.

£5.00 a kilo, sold as a single 150g tin or in packs of eleven.

A growing pup's ration is a moving target, climbing steeply through the early months and then easing back as the adult frame arrives. Work from the maker's growth chart and let your pup's body condition confirm what it suggests.