Hill's Science Plan Adult 1+ Sensitive Stomach & Skin Medium review

This food and the typical adult dry food share the Good band in our scoring, and the label explains why. The poultry is named and it arrives as meal, not fresh meat, which counts in its favour. Against that, only 15% of the recipe is declared as poultry, several working entries name no species, and protein settles at 24.2% of dry matter with estimated carbohydrate at 53.4%. None of that is an argument against feeding it. What it describes is a sensible cereal based everyday kibble. The fibre and the mineral dosing are what answer the sensitive stomach and skin brief.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken and turkey meal (chicken 9%; total poultry 15%), broken rice, maize, brown rice, maize protein meal, barley, oats, animal fat, digest, vegetable oil, dried beet pulp (2.5%), flaxseed, minerals, dried eggs.

Chicken and turkey meal comes first, with 9% chicken inside a total poultry figure of 15%. Meal is meat with its water driven off before it reaches the mixer. There is no shrinking away in the oven, so the printed figure holds up in the finished biscuit. On a dry matter basis the analysis reads 24.2% protein and 15.2% fat, a moderate build for an adult kibble.

Broken rice leads the plant side, and the name is less exotic than it sounds. It is the fragment left behind when rice is milled, cooked soft and generally kind to a stomach that objects easily. Maize, brown rice, barley and oats follow it. Barley and oats bring useful fibre with them. Barley is a gluten grain, so a dog kept away from gluten needs a different bag. Among them sits maize protein meal, a plant protein doing part of the work behind the protein figure.

The sensitive stomach and skin brief shows up in the smaller entries. Dried beet pulp at 2.5% is a moderately fermentable fibre, the sort used to firm up a loose stool without slowing everything to a halt. Flaxseed supplies omega 3 in its plant form. A dog converts that slowly into the skin active version, so a coat takes weeks to show the difference. Dried eggs close the list as a compact, easily used protein.

Three entries name no species: animal fat, digest and vegetable oil. Digest is hydrolysed animal tissue, sprayed on to give the kibble a taste. It is often why a picky dog clears this sort of bowl. None of it is unusual on a shelf like this one, but it does mean the recipe cannot anchor a strict elimination trial on its own.

Every entry on the mineral panel carries a printed dose. Zinc is at 133 mg per kilo, with iron at 76.0 mg, manganese at 7.9 mg, copper at 7.5 mg, iodine at 1.9 mg and selenium at 0.2 mg. Skin leans on zinc harder than on any other mineral, and on a food with skin in its name you want to see that figure declared.

Sold in 2.5kg and 14kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would get through roughly 227 grams a day, working from a maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). Let the waistline settle the final portion.