WildPack Puppy review

This recipe reaches our Outstanding band, keeping company with the typical raw puppy food, which takes some doing in the strongest field we score. Named organ meats, a generous tripe share, a bone-in poultry cut and a list with nothing starchy on it are what carry it. Every one of the four pillars reads Outstanding.

Ingredients, as declared: Beef Heart (36%), Chicken with Bone (30%), Beef Tripe (20%), Beef Kidney (2%), Beef Liver (2%), Seasonal Green Vegetables, Parsnip, Butternut Squash, Blueberry, Raspberry, Kelp, Salmon Oil.

Beef heart leads at 36%, and it is a deliberate piece of recipe design. Heart is a hard-working muscle, not an organ in the offal sense. It is dense in protein and rich in the nutrients a muscle needs to keep contracting, and it is one of the traditional cornerstones of a home-prepared raw bowl. Putting it first, ahead of the poultry, gives the recipe its character.

Chicken with bone at 30% is where the calcium comes from, since there is no mineral premix on this list at all. That makes the bone share the load-bearing part of the recipe for a growing dog. It is also where the label stops short: crude ash reads 3.3% of dry matter and no calcium figure is printed beside it. A small or medium breed puppy leaves that as a modest question mark. A large or giant breed is different: the calcium window during growth is genuinely narrow, so have the conversation with the maker before you commit.

Beef tripe at 20% is an unusually generous share, and it is the entry most likely to win a fussy puppy over. Tripe comes from the stomach of a grazing animal. It smells strong, dogs find it enormously palatable, and it brings its own digestive enzymes and bacteria along with the protein and fat. Kidney and liver at 2% each finish the organ set, liver in particular carrying the vitamin A, B12 and copper that a starch-free recipe has to source from somewhere.

The plant tail is brief: seasonal green vegetables, parsnip, butternut squash, blueberry and raspberry, with kelp and salmon oil to close. Kelp is the iodine source and salmon oil the long chain omega 3, both of which matter more in a growing dog than in a settled adult. Seasonal green vegetables is the one entry that will not tell you exactly what is in the bowl, since the greens follow the growing year.

The analysis is meat-shaped in the extreme. Protein converts to 40.0% of dry matter and fat to 50.0%, with carbohydrate at 0.0% because nothing on the list contributes any. Energy is an estimate rather than a declared figure, at 170 kcal per 100g. Fat that high is not a problem for a puppy putting on frame and muscle. It does mean portions should be judged on how the puppy is filling out, week by week.

£6.85 a kilo. The only size sold is a 1kg box holding two 500g packs, and WildPack asks for a 6kg minimum order.

The label's guide works in daily averages by bodyweight rather than by age, at 125 grams for a 5kg dog, 250 grams at 10kg and 500 grams at 20kg. A growing puppy usually needs more than a settled adult of the same weight, so treat those figures as a starting point and adjust as the weeks go on.