Hill's Science Plan Hypoallergenic Adult Dog Food with Salmon review

Our pillars separate here in a way they rarely do on a big brand wet tin. Transparency comes back Excellent and nutritional balance Average, because this label names its ingredients and that counts for something real.

What holds the overall reading in our Average band is the balance of the recipe. Salmon at 10% is set against a long run of peas, potatoes and their refined starches and proteins, and the arithmetic follows: protein converts to 24.8% of dry matter while estimated carbohydrate reaches 51.7%. The typical adult wet food is an Excellent band food built the other way round, with more animal and less starch. The distance between them comes down to what the tin is made of, not what it tells you. Protein and processing reads Poor.

For a dog whose skin or digestion has finally settled on this food, none of that is a reason to change course. Our reading measures the recipe as declared; it cannot measure how well your particular dog is doing on it, and that is the test that matters most in a sensitivity case.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon (10%), dried peas, dried potatoes, pea protein, potato starch, vegetable oil, digest, dried carrots, minerals, cellulose, dried beet pulp, dried tomato pomace, dried citrus pulp, spinach powder.

Only one animal is named in the recipe, salmon at 10%. For a wet food, that is a modest but genuine share, and the figure is printed on the label. Oily fish brings protein your dog digests easily and the long chain omega-3 fats that skin and coat work with, which is a sensible choice for the dogs this tin is aimed at.

Behind it comes the plant half of the recipe, and it is a substantial half: dried peas, dried potatoes, pea protein and potato starch, one after the other. Whole peas and potatoes are reasonable ingredients that carry fibre and micronutrients alongside their starch. Pea protein and potato starch are refined fractions and do a narrower job, the first lifting the protein figure without adding meat and the second binding and bulking. Between them they explain the estimated carbohydrate at 51.7% of dry matter. They also explain why a protein reading of 24.8% does slightly less work here than it would on a fish led recipe.

Digest is the entry to know about. It is an animal material treated to make food more appealing, used in small amounts. Which animal it came from is not stated. So the tin is not a single animal recipe, whatever the front of the pack suggests. An elimination trial for a dog avoiding one particular species needs something else. For the far more common case of a dog with sensitive skin and no confirmed diagnosis, digest at this level rarely causes anyone a problem.

Fibre arrives from several directions: dried beet pulp and cellulose, then dried tomato pomace and dried citrus pulp, with carrots and spinach powder alongside. Beet pulp is a well established, gently fermentable fibre that most dogs form good stools on. Cellulose is purified plant fibre, effective at what it does but stripped of everything that came with it in the plant, so it does a job without feeding the dog.

The analysis is unusual for wet food. Moisture is declared at 71.0%, the driest end of the wet shelf. Energy is 119 kcal per 100g against the 97 kcal typical for the category, so a dog gets more from a smaller serve. Fat converts to 16.9% of dry matter and calcium to 0.72%, both comfortable for an adult dog.

The added minerals each carry a printed dose. Iron is at 8.7 mg, iodine at 0.3 mg, copper at 3.2 mg, manganese at 3.3 mg, zinc at 12.3 mg and selenium at 0.03 mg per kilo. Selenium is the one worth noticing on a recipe pointed at skin and coat, since it is among the antioxidant minerals a dog draws on to keep one in good order.

£6.08 a kilo, sold in a 363 g pack.

These tins carry more energy per gram than most wet food, so a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs only about 705 grams a day. That is roughly £4.28, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate).