Hill's Prescription Diet i/d Stew for Dogs review

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and animal derivatives (chicken 10%), derivatives of vegetable origin, cereals, various sugars, minerals, vegetables (0.8%), oils and fats, eggs and egg derivatives, yeasts, fruit, seeds.

Meat and animal derivatives lead the pack, with chicken declared at 10% inside that entry. Derivatives of vegetable origin follow, then cereals, then various sugars. That fourth entry is the one that separates a stew from a solid food: sugars carry flavour and help a gravy behave the way a gravy should. Vegetables are pinned at 0.8%, with yeasts, fruit and seeds trailing behind.

No second list of named ingredients is printed on this one, so chicken and egg are the only animal entries you can attach a species to and the rest stays inside the derivatives wording. Anyone running a strict exclusion plan should have that detail in hand first.

Protein converts to 26.7% of dry matter and fat to 15.9%, with the carbohydrate estimate at 48.3%. Energy reads 78 kcal per 100g, and moisture is declared at 80.5%. Four fifths of what goes in the bowl is water. The daily weight of food is large while the calories in it are not. Calcium works out at 0.92% of dry matter and crude ash at 7.2%, and iron, iodine, copper, manganese and zinc each carry a printed dose.

The feeding guide follows from that energy figure, running from 134 grams a day at 2.5kg of body weight to 1048 grams at 40kg, with 454 grams at 10kg. A stew built for a recovering gut is designed around what a dog will actually eat. Whether it belongs in your dog's routine is settled with the vet who suggested it.

The packs are 354g and 156g, at £9.86 a kilo. Read against 1077 grams a day, the amount a 15kg dog's energy needs work out to on a food this light, that puts the daily figure at £10.62.