Hill's Prescription Diet On-Care Dry Dog Food review

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, meat and animal derivatives (chicken 15%), oils and fats, vegetable protein extracts, derivatives of vegetable origin, minerals, fruit, seeds. ActivBiome+ prebiotic blend (4%): Ground pecan shell, dried beet pulp, flaxseed, dried citrus pulp, dried cranberries. Highly digestible ingredients: Chicken and turkey meal, wheat, animal fat, maize, maize gluten meal, digest, fish oil, vegetable oil.

The top of the label is category wording, cereals first, then meat and animal derivatives with chicken at 15%, then oils and fats, vegetable protein extracts, derivatives of vegetable origin, minerals, fruit and seeds. Underneath that, Hill's does something more useful for a reader and prints two named blocks.

Its ActivBiome+ prebiotic blend comes first, declared at 4%. The make-up is printed under it: ground pecan shell at the head, with dried beet pulp and flaxseed after that. Dried citrus pulp and dried cranberries close it. What these entries feed is the gut flora rather than the dog, and Hill's gives each of them a line instead of folding them into the category terms above.

The second block is what the maker calls its highly digestible ingredients: chicken and turkey meal, wheat, animal fat, maize, maize gluten meal, digest, fish oil and vegetable oil. Digest is a processed animal palatant that coats the outside of the kibble. In a food aimed at a dog who may not much feel like eating, making the bowl smell worth crossing the room for is a functional requirement.

Read together, those two blocks put chicken, turkey, wheat, maize and fish in the recipe. That is more detail than the category terms alone would ever give you, and it also means more named ingredients to check off if your dog has a sensitivity on record.

On the analysis, this reads nothing like the weight management side of the range. Protein is declared at 29.5% and fat at 21.7%, converting to 32.1% and 23.6% of dry matter, crude fibre is low at 2.3%, and the carbohydrate estimate sits at 36.7% of dry matter. Energy reads 407 kcal per 100g, so a smaller bowl carries more calories, which is the deliberate design when appetite or condition is what needs managing.

The trace minerals are dosed on the pack, iron at 78.5mg, iodine at 1.9mg, copper at 7.7mg, manganese at 8.1mg, zinc at 138mg and selenium at 0.2mg, alongside a natural antioxidant. The feeding guide opens at 30 grams a day for a 1kg dog, reads 155 grams at 10kg and reaches 520 grams for a 50kg dog. Adjusting those amounts as things change is a job for the practice that started your dog on it.

The bags run 1.5kg, 4kg and 10kg, at £5.53 a kilo. Working from a 15kg dog eating 207 grams a day, that comes out at about £1.14 a day.