Hill's Prescription Diet Metabolic Dog Food review

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, derivatives of vegetable origin, meat and animal derivatives (chicken 8%), vegetable protein extracts, vegetables, oils and fats, seeds, minerals.

The label is written in category wording rather than ingredient names. Cereals take first place, derivatives of vegetable origin second, and the meat arrives third as meat and animal derivatives with chicken printed at 8%. Vegetable protein extracts, vegetables, oils and fats, seeds and minerals fill out the rest.

Chicken is the one species the packet commits to. Which grains sit inside the cereals, where the vegetable protein is extracted from and what goes into the oils and fats are all left open. An owner running an exclusion trial has only that 8% to work from, and the same wording would still cover the recipe if a supplier changed. Anything you are actively keeping out of your dog's bowl is a short question for the practice that dispensed this.

Crude fibre is declared at 12.9%, or 14.0% of dry matter. That is a heavy fibre load beside an everyday kibble. Filling a dog up on fewer calories is precisely the job a slimming diet is drawn up to do, and this figure is that design at work. Fat is modest to match, 10.7% as fed and 11.6% of dry matter, with energy declared at 310 kcal per 100g.

Protein reads 26.6% on the packet and 28.9% of dry matter, against a carbohydrate estimate of 39.7% of dry matter. Some of that protein is coming from the vegetable protein extracts rather than from the chicken, which is normal in a recipe shaped this way and useful context when you read the number.

The added minerals carry their doses in print: iron at 77.3mg, iodine at 1.9mg, copper at 7.6mg, manganese at 83.0mg, zinc at 135mg and selenium at 0.2mg, with a natural antioxidant closing the panel.

The bag prints a feeding table by bodyweight. On a slimming plan the daily ration is normally calculated by the practice against a target weight and revised at each weigh-in, and the table is background reading. Whether this food belongs in your dog's plan at all is a decision for the vet who is managing that plan.

It comes in 1.5kg, 4kg and 12kg bags, at £5.53 a kilo. Taking a 15kg dog eating 271 grams a day as the basis, that puts the daily cost at about £1.50.