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

Set against the Good band that the middle of the adult dry category occupies, our scale reads this recipe Average. Protein and processing comes out Poor, with nutritional balance Average and transparency Good. The arithmetic is simple: one named meat at 9%, four different grains ahead of or around it, and a carbohydrate estimate above what a dry food usually shows. What the score cannot capture is the consistency this brand builds its reputation on. Nor can it capture the plain usefulness of lamb as the sole named animal to a small dog that has run out of patience with chicken.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize, brown rice (11%), broken rice (11%), wheat, lamb meal (9%), maize protein meal, barley, oats, animal fat, digest, soybean meal, vegetable oil, minerals, flaxseed, oat bran, fructo-oligosaccharides, dried tomato pomace, dried citrus pulp, spinach powder.

Four grains do the heavy lifting. Maize leads, brown rice and broken rice follow at 11% each, wheat comes fourth, and barley and oats appear a little further down. More of the bran survives in brown rice than in the broken sort. Oats bring soluble fibre and a host of micronutrients, and barley is easy on most dogs once cooked. Taken together, though, that is a great deal of the bowl arriving as cereal.

Lamb meal at 9% is the only named animal on the label. Meal means it went in already dried, so the 9% is a fair reflection of what stays in the kibble. Lamb is a genuinely useful protein when chicken has left a dog itchy or simply bored. It is a red meat, which brings a little more of the fat and the minerals best kept moderate in a dog with a urinary or heart history, and no more than that.

Animal fat, digest and soybean meal are the entries that will raise an eyebrow. The first two name no species at all, so the lamb story here is a change of named protein and not a clean single source. Soybean meal takes on some of the work the meat would otherwise do, and it is a plant protein. Most dogs digest it perfectly well, though nobody picks the bag up for it.

The analysis lands where a grain led kibble lands. Protein converts to 23.3% of dry matter, fat to 15.4% and fibre to 1.8%, with estimated carbohydrate at 53.7% against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food. Calcium comes out at 0.85% of dry matter, a comfortable adult figure.

The small print flatters the label. Every trace mineral has a number beside it. Zinc reads 157 mg per kilo, iron 89.8 mg, manganese 9.3 mg, copper 8.9 mg, iodine 2.2 mg and selenium 0.2 mg. Oat bran and fructo-oligosaccharides sit near the end as the prebiotic pairing, flaxseed supplies plant omegas, and spinach powder, tomato pomace and citrus pulp are antioxidant touches at trace level rather than anything of substance.

Sold in 6kg and 1.5kg bags.

For portioning, the standard maintenance estimate of 110 kcal × bodyweight^0.75 works out at roughly 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult in moderate condition, which is about 228 grams of this food. A small dog scales down from there, so take the first portion from the table printed on the bag and adjust by feel over a fortnight.