Hill's Science Plan Light Small & Mini Mature Adult Dog Food with Chicken review

Ingredient order tells most of this story. Wheat and maize sit above the chicken and turkey meal, which is declared as 9% chicken within 15% total poultry, and the analysis follows suit at 19.2% protein of dry matter and 50.1% estimated carbohydrate. That lands the food in our Average band, a step below the Good band the typical adult dry food occupies. Nutritional balance reads Poor and protein and processing Average, while transparency reads Good because the percentages that matter are printed on the pack. What a band cannot say is that this recipe is deliberately light, so part of the gap is the diet doing its job on purpose. If your older dog needs calories held down and joints thought about, this still answers, and a protein rich topper is an easy way to lift the rest.

Ingredients, as declared: Wheat, maize, chicken and turkey meal (chicken 9%; total poultry 15%), pea bran meal, cellulose, barley, oats, digest, animal fat, flaxseed, dried beet pulp, vegetable oil, minerals, oat bran, fructo-oligosaccharides, pork cartilage (source of chondroitin sulphate), crustacean shell hydrolysate (source of glucosamine). ActivBiome+ Multi Benefit prebiotic blend (0.6%): Oat bran, fructo-oligosaccharides.

Wheat first and maize second is an unusual opening on a food at this level, and it is the single biggest reason the recipe reads the way it does. Cereal intolerance in dogs points at wheat more often than at anything else. If your dog has itched on cereal foods before, this bag deserves a second thought. For a dog with no such history, it is simply the structure of the biscuit.

Third comes the chicken and turkey meal, 9% chicken within a 15% poultry total. Meal is dried meat, so those percentages survive the cooking, but they still add up to a modest animal share and the finished protein of 19.2% of dry matter reflects it. On an older dog that is the figure to keep an eye on, because muscle is the thing age takes first and protein is what defends it.

Fibre is where the light promise is kept. Pea bran meal and cellulose push crude fibre to 12.9% as fed, or 14.0% of dry matter. Diet foods lean on cellulose for a reason. Purified plant fibre goes through a dog more or less untouched and brings bulk with almost no energy. It is effective at that one job and unremarkable in every other respect.

The mature half of the brief is handled at the end of the list. Pork cartilage supplies chondroitin sulphate and crustacean shell hydrolysate supplies glucosamine, the pair most commonly given to older dogs for joint comfort, though neither comes with a dose in print. ActivBiome+ is 0.6% of the recipe, oat bran with fructo-oligosaccharides, and it feeds the gut's own bacteria. Beet pulp and barley add fermentable fibre beside it.

Trace minerals are dosed on the label at 132 mg of zinc, 75.5 mg of iron, 7.8 mg of manganese, 7.4 mg of copper, 1.9 mg of iodine and 0.2 mg of selenium per kilo. Calcium sits at 0.88% of dry matter. Animal fat, digest and vegetable oil go unnamed, as they do on most labels built this way, and flaxseed adds a little plant omega 3 for an older coat.

£4.83 a kilo, sold in a 2.5kg bag.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would need roughly 273 grams a day to meet the usual 840 kcal maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), or £1.32 a day. Most dogs on this food are far smaller: the label asks 180 grams a day for a 10kg dog and 105 grams for a 5kg one.