Wellness Core Puppy Wet: Chicken with Turkey with Pumpkin review

This one settles in our Outstanding band, a step clear of the typical wet puppy food, which sits in Excellent. That gap deserves explaining, because the analysis is not where it comes from. Nutritional balance reads Outstanding, protein converts to 52.0% of dry matter and the starch load is unusually light even for a wet food. Transparency reads Outstanding too, since the cuts of meat are named rather than pooled into a category.

Protein and processing reads Excellent.

Ingredients, as declared: 75% Chicken [47% (Hearts, Livers, Meat, Necks, Chicken Fat), 28% Chicken Broth], 20% Turkey (Hearts, Livers, Meat, Necks), 2.5% Pumpkin, 1.3% Minerals, 1% Banana, 0.2% Fish Oil

The meat figure here is the story. Chicken at 75% breaks down into 47% of hearts, livers, meat, necks and chicken fat, with 28% of chicken broth making up the balance, and turkey adds 20% in the same named cuts. Naming organs and cuts rather than pooling them under a heading is the kind of detail that lets an owner know what they are actually buying.

There is real work being done here by the organ meat. Very little a dog eats packs more nutrition per mouthful than liver, generous in B12, vitamin A, copper and selenium. Heart brings its own useful protein, and the balance of cuts looks chosen, not incidental.

The broth share is worth understanding. At 28% it is part of the 75% chicken headline, and broth is largely water, so the meat that delivers the protein is closer to the 47% figure than the bigger one. The analysis backs it up regardless, with protein converting to 52.0% of dry matter and fat to 28.0%.

The plant side barely registers, and deliberately so. Pumpkin at 2.5% and banana at 1% are the whole of it. The estimated carbohydrate is 6.0% of dry matter, well under the 13.6% a wet puppy food usually carries. Fish oil at 0.2% brings the marine omegas. It is also the reason fish appears in the allergen picture.

The added panel is where this label thins out. Vitamin D3 at 200 IU is the only vitamin declared, with zinc, copper, manganese and iodine behind it, and minerals appear on the ingredients list as a single heading at 1.3%. Ash converts to 11.0% of dry matter, so the mineral content itself is generous. There is no printed calcium figure, though, which leaves a large breed rearing plan nothing on this pack to work from.

Sold in 400g packs.

A puppy's daily amount climbs steeply through the early months, then eases off as the frame fills out. Start with the maker's chart on the pack and let your pup's own condition adjust it. Across the weights it covers, the label asks for 239g to 451g a day.