Hill's Science Plan Adult 1-6 Small & Mini with Chicken review

Our Good band is where this one lands, in the same company as the typical adult dry food. Good is the mark for protein and processing and for transparency, while nutritional balance sits at Average. Nothing here reads badly, and the label simply does not chase what our scale rewards hardest, a large named meat share and a light carbohydrate load. Put the meat first, name both birds, dose the minerals in print, and you get a food that reads sensibly on the page and behaves predictably in the bowl.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken and turkey meal (chicken 13%; total poultry 21%), maize, wheat, broken rice, animal fat, digest, vegetable oil, flaxseed, minerals, oat bran, spinach powder, dried citrus pulp, dried tomato pomace, fructo-oligosaccharides. ActivBiome+ Multi Benefit prebiotic blend (0.6%): Oat bran, fructo-oligosaccharides.

Meal first is the headline here. Chicken and turkey meal opens the list: 13% chicken inside 21% total poultry. Meal is meat with the water taken out before mixing. The label figure is therefore close to the weight that ends up in the kibble. That is a more honest starting point than a large fresh meat percentage that quietly shrinks in the oven.

Maize, wheat and broken rice come next and between them do most of the binding. Wheat is the one owners ask about. Plenty of dogs live long, glossy lives on it. It is also the first grain anyone blames when a dinner stops suiting a dog. Give it a thought if that has ever been the pattern at your house.

The species behind the animal fat and the digest stays private. Digest is the palatant, sprayed on to give the kibble the smell a small dog actually responds to, and on that count it earns its keep. The recipe cannot be read as poultry and nothing else. That matters chiefly if you are running an exclusion trial.

What follows is short and clearly chosen. Flaxseed brings plant omegas, oat bran and fructo-oligosaccharides double as the declared prebiotic blend at 0.6%, and then come spinach powder, dried citrus pulp and dried tomato pomace. Those last three sit at trace level and are there for their antioxidants rather than for any real bulk.

The analysis reads well for a cereal inclusive kibble. Protein converts to 25.0% of dry matter and fat to 15.5%, with estimated carbohydrate at 52.9% against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food, and calcium at 0.84% of dry matter. Every trace mineral carries a dose: zinc at 132 mg per kilo, iron at 75.1 mg, copper at 7.4 mg, manganese at 7.8 mg, iodine at 1.9 mg and selenium at 0.2 mg. A natural antioxidant does the preserving.

Sold in 6kg, 3kg, 1.5kg and 300g bags.

For portioning, the standard maintenance estimate of 110 kcal × bodyweight^0.75 puts a 15kg adult in moderate condition at about 226 grams a day, and a small dog scales down from there. For a dog under 10kg the table printed on the bag is the more useful starting point, and the waistline is more useful still.