Hill's Prescription Diet l/d Dry review

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, oils and fats, vegetable protein extracts, eggs and egg derivatives, seeds, minerals, meat and animal derivatives, derivatives of vegetable origin. Protein sources: Soybean meal, dried whole eggs, maize gluten meal.

Cereals open the list and oils and fats come second, which is high placing for a fat entry and shows where the energy in this kibble originates. Vegetable protein extracts, eggs and egg derivatives, seeds and minerals follow, with meat and animal derivatives near the bottom. Hill's names the protein sources as soybean meal, dried whole eggs and maize gluten meal, and no animal species is identified anywhere on the label.

Two of those three named sources are plant based, leaving dried whole eggs as the animal contribution. That is a deliberate way of assembling protein for a diet of this type, and the label does say so plainly even while the top of the ingredient list stays in category language.

What stands out in the additive panel is an absence rather than an inclusion. Iron is dosed at 19.7mg, zinc at 136mg, manganese at 3.9mg, iodine at 1.3mg and selenium at 0.2mg, with a natural antioxidant, and no copper figure is printed on the declaration at all.

For an exclusion plan the label hands you soya, maize and egg by name and then goes quiet. Whatever you want kept out of the bowl could still be sitting inside cereals, oils and fats, or meat and animal derivatives. That is worth raising at the practice before the food is relied on to exclude anything in particular.

Fat is declared at 21.9% and converts to 23.8% of dry matter, against protein at 16.7% declared and 18.2% dried out. Energy reaches 407 kcal per 100g, so a smaller bowl still carries the calories while protein stays where the maker wants it. That is how a diet like this is intended to work. The carbohydrate estimate is 49.7% of dry matter, crude fibre 2.6% and ash 5.7%, with calcium at 0.85%.

Moisture is declared at 8.0% rather than assumed, so those conversions come straight off the label. Feeding runs from 55 grams a day at 2.5kg through 155 grams at 10kg to 440 grams at 40kg. A liver diet usually sits inside a wider plan of medication and repeat testing, and the vet running that plan is the one to decide whether this bag has a part in it.

It is sold in 1.5 kg, 4 kg and 10 kg bags. On the label's guide a 15kg dog would eat around 207 grams a day.