Hill's Prescription Diet i/d Low Fat Digestive Care Wet Dog Food Original Can review

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and animal derivatives, cereals, derivatives of vegetable origin, eggs and egg derivatives, minerals, seeds, oils and fats, vegetables, fruit. Highly digestible ingredients: Pork, rice, rice flour, maize, chicken, dried eggs, digest, vegetable oil, fish oil. ActivBiome+ Prebiotic blend (1.8%): Dried beet pulp, flaxseed, ground pecan shell, dried citrus pulp, dried cranberries.

The label opens in category language, with no species given. Meat and animal derivatives come first, cereals second, derivatives of vegetable origin third, with eggs and egg derivatives, minerals, seeds, oils and fats behind them. Hill's then prints a separate list of what it calls its highly digestible ingredients, and that is where names appear: pork, rice, rice flour, maize, chicken, dried eggs, digest, vegetable oil and fish oil. Pork is printed ahead of chicken there, which is worth registering on a tin filed under poultry.

Digest is a palatant, a processed coating brushed over food to make it smell and taste more interesting. A dog coming off a bout of illness often needs persuading back to the bowl, and an inclusion like that is part of how a maker handles it.

The tin brings in pork, chicken, egg and fish through the oil, and the categories at the top of the list could hold more besides. That is a lot to weigh up if you are working out what your dog reacts to. That makes it a difficult label to run a strict exclusion plan from without asking Hill's what sits inside those terms.

The ActivBiome+ prebiotic blend is declared at 1.8% and named in full as dried beet pulp, flaxseed, ground pecan shell, dried citrus pulp and dried cranberries. Those are fibre sources rather than nutrients for the dog, put there to feed the bacteria in the gut.

On the analysis, protein converts to 25.3% of dry matter and fat to 8.2%, the carbohydrate estimate lands at 58.7% and energy reads 95 kcal per 100g. A food sold as low fat is meant to keep fat that far down. Starch steps into the space it leaves, and that is where the carbohydrate figure comes from. Calcium, read on the same dry matter basis, comes out at 0.78%, with crude ash at 5.8%.

Iron, iodine, copper, manganese and zinc are each printed with a dose beside them. The tin's own guide runs from 100 grams a day at 1kg of body weight to 1150 grams at 50kg, with 450 grams listed at 10kg. Both the portion and the decision to feed it at all sit with the vet who recommended it.

It is sold in 360g and 200g tins.