HiLife Adult Dog 150g Pouches: Chicken Breast in Jelly review

Our scoring puts every pouch in the range in the Outstanding band, and none of them slips out of it. Our system rates adult wet food a strong category, and its typical member holds the band below, so reaching the top one is a genuine result and no free pass.

The four are not identical underneath. Every pouch reads Excellent for protein and processing, with nutritional balance and transparency both Outstanding, so the differences sit in the recipes rather than in the pillars. Whichever you choose, the band is the same, so let your dog's tastes and any avoidance list make the call.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (60%), carrots (5%), peas (5%), sunflower Oil, tapioca starch, minerals, chicory extract (300mg/kg), seaweed extract (200mg/kg), yucca extract (50mg/kg), glucosamine (50mg/kg), chondroitin (15mg/kg).

Chicken opens every list and it never arrives without a number. It is 46% in the two pouches that share the bowl with a second meat, 55% as chicken breast in the broth recipe and 60% in the jelly. Once the water is taken out, protein converts to between 40.0% and 73.7% of dry matter depending on the pouch, which is a properly meat led set of analyses for wet food.

The plant side is small and named. Wholegrain brown rice at 4% carries the starch on two labels, and tapioca starch does the same quiet job in the jelly. The broth pouch leans on carrots at 10%, beans at 10% and peas at 5% instead. Estimated carbohydrate lands anywhere from 6.7% to 22.1% of dry matter across the range, with the typical adult wet food sitting at 15.8%, so these pouches straddle the usual mark.

Fruit and vegetables come in fours. One label has green beans and apple; another has sweet potato and blueberries; the Chicken & Meat pair runs kale and cranberry on one and carrot and pumpkin on the other. Each is declared at 4%. They add interest and a little fibre without changing the shape of the analysis, and the label prints how much of each goes into the pouch.

Sunflower oil at 1% supplies the added fat and is one of the kinder oils to see in a wet recipe, low in saturated fat and naturally carrying vitamin E. Fish oil follows on two labels at 0.2%, a flavour of omega-3 and not a working dose, so a dog fed for skin or coat will still want its own supplement.

The tail of each list is the same trio: chicory extract at 300 mg/kg, seaweed extract at 200 mg/kg and yucca extract at 50 mg/kg. Inulin is what chicory root brings, and the bacteria living in the gut can use it. Seaweed is a mineral rich plant with iodine among its contents, and yucca is the traditional answer to a smelly garden. Every one of the three sits at trace level, and none is the reason you would buy this food.

Glucosamine at 50 mg/kg and chondroitin at 15 mg/kg close three of the four lists. The doses are printed, and many labels do not bother. They are a friendly extra at this level. If your vet has your dog on a joint supplement already, keep it going. Treat these as a small bonus riding along with dinner.

Every label prints a dose for the added vitamins and trace elements, from vitamin A and vitamin E through to iron, zinc, copper, iodine and manganese. The two chicken breast labels also list vitamin B12 and vitamin D3 with units that do not read correctly, so we have left those two figures alone instead of repeating them.

Chicken at 60%, the biggest named share in the range, with carrots and peas at 5% each and tapioca starch binding the jelly. Only this recipe uses a single meat. Chicken does all of it. Estimated carbohydrate is 6.7% of dry matter, the lowest of the four, against protein at 73.7%. At 84 kcal per 100g these are the lightest pouches, so daily portions run largest.

Sold as 150g pouches, in boxes of 8, 14 and 24 depending on the recipe.

No checked per-kilo figure was in hand when this was written, so there is no day rate to go with it. On portioning, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would work through roughly 840 to 1000 grams a day across the range, taking about 840 kcal a day as the maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75). HiLife's own guide asks 600 to 1125 grams a day for a dog between 12kg and 25kg.