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

Two things hold the reading down here and both are visible in the first four ingredients. Potato and pea sit ahead of the salmon, so the animal share of the recipe is small, and protein lands at 21.6% of dry matter with estimated carbohydrate at 55.5%. That puts the food in our Average band while the typical adult dry food holds our Good band a step above. Read fairly, though, this recipe is not trying to win a general nutrition contest. It is trying to keep the list short for a dog who reacts to things, and on that narrower brief it is doing something genuinely useful. Its transparency reads Good, ahead of what the recipe manages on protein and processing, because the fish is named and the potato share is printed.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried potatoes (21%), potato starch, dried peas, salmon meal (9%), pea protein, animal fat, digest, vegetable oil, minerals, dried beet pulp, flaxseed, dried tomato pomace, dried citrus pulp, spinach powder, dried carrots.

Dried potatoes at 21% take the top of the list with potato starch immediately behind them. Potato is largely starch, and pure potato starch is the binder that lets a grain free biscuit hold together at all, so between them they are doing structural work as much as nutritional work. Dried peas in third place at least bring fibre and a scattering of minerals along with their share of the starch.

Salmon meal is declared at 9% and it is the only animal the label names. Meal is a concentrated, water free form of the fish, so that 9% goes further than the same figure would as fresh salmon. It carries the long chain omega 3s a coat can use directly. Even so, a protein total of 21.6% of dry matter is gentle for a dry food, and pea protein on the list means part of that total comes from a plant.

The hypoallergenic name is fair as a description of intent rather than a guarantee. There is one named species and no grain, which is genuinely short by kibble standards, but animal fat and digest both arrive without a species attached. That is the detail to raise with your vet if a formal exclusion diet is on the cards. For the far more common case, a dog who simply does better away from chicken and beef, it is unlikely to matter at all.

The last few entries are the pleasant part. Dried beet pulp gives the gut fermentable fibre, flaxseed adds plant omega 3 alongside the fish, and tomato pomace, citrus pulp, spinach powder and dried carrots bring small antioxidant touches. They are seasoning, and the recipe neither stands nor falls on them.

Fat is declared at 15.4% of dry matter, a normal working level, though the fat itself is split between unnamed animal fat and unnamed vegetable oil. Naming both would tell a reader more, and it is the one place where a recipe built on the promise of a short list could easily say more than it does.

£4.29 a kilo.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes out at about £0.97 a day, on roughly 227 grams and a maintenance estimate of 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). A large breed adult eats well above that, so scale the portion up to suit your own dog.