Hill's Science Plan Mature Adult 7+ Youthful Vitality Small & Mini review

This label finishes in our Average band while the typical adult dry food manages a Good, and the distance is smaller than that pairing first suggests. Protein converts to 21.6% of dry matter, the pillar for protein and processing reads Average rather than Poor, and the recipe brings egg, fish oil and a real spread of plant antioxidants along with it. What keeps the reading down is the base underneath all that: maize and broken rice take the first two places and estimated carbohydrate reaches 57.8% of dry matter, against 46.2% for a typical dry food. For an older small dog eating a modest amount each day, there is more in this bowl than the band on its own implies.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize, broken rice (24%), chicken and turkey meal (chicken 8%; total poultry 13%), barley, oats, dried eggs, digest, vegetable oil, animal fat, dried beet pulp, flaxseed, minerals, dried carrots, dried tomato pomace, dried citrus pulp, fish oil, spinach powder.

Maize leads and broken rice follows at a declared 24%, so cereal and rice make the body of the kibble. The absence of wheat is worth noticing, since wheat is the grain dogs most commonly react to, and swapping it for maize, rice, barley and oats gives a gentler set of starches to work with.

Dried eggs back up a chicken and turkey meal that is 8% chicken and 13% total poultry. Egg sits at the top of the digestibility table, and it rounds out the amino acid picture of a cereal heavy recipe rather nicely. Protein finishes at 19.9% as fed, which converts to 21.6% of dry matter.

Fish oil is the entry that most justifies the name on the bag. It supplies the long chain omega 3s a dog absorbs directly, where the plant form in flaxseed has to be converted first. It is the form usually chosen when a recipe is written with an older dog in mind. It sits late in the list, so treat it as a useful inclusion and not a measured dose, and note that its presence means the recipe is not fish free.

Dried tomato pomace, dried carrots, dried citrus pulp and spinach powder make up the antioxidant tail. Carrots are there for beta carotene and soluble fibre. The tomato and citrus pulps are what remains after juicing, and they carry useful plant compounds with them. Spinach powder is there in a small way for the same reason. None of it is nutritional bulk, but as garnishes go this is a sensible one.

Fibre is light at 1.8% of dry matter, with dried beet pulp doing most of that work. The trace minerals are dosed per kilo: zinc at 147 mg, iron at 84.1 mg, manganese at 8.7 mg, copper at 8.3 mg, iodine at 2.1 mg and selenium at 0.2 mg. Calcium converts to 0.89% of dry matter, comfortably in adult territory.

Sold in a single 6kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg dog in moderate condition would eat about 233 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Most dogs on a small breed recipe weigh a good deal less than that. The label asks 90 grams a day for a 5kg dog and 155 grams for a 10kg one, with the waistline settling anything in between.