Hill's Science Plan Mature Adult Dog Stew with Chicken & added Vegetables review

Our Average placement here comes down to declaration. Protein and processing reads Good, while transparency lands in our Average band and holds the reading back. The recipe is described in legal categories, the analysis leaves out moisture and ash, and little on the page gives a scoring system anything to reward with confidence. Adult wet food as a group reaches our Excellent band, because most wet labels do name their animal and do print their moisture. Hill's has chosen not to here, and the distance between the two is about paperwork rather than about anything wrong in the tray. Generations of older dogs have done perfectly well on food written this way.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and animal derivatives (chicken 6%), cereals, derivatives of vegetable origin, vegetables (1.7%), oils and fats, minerals, eggs and egg derivatives, various sugars, seeds.

The working part of this list is five category terms and one number. Chicken at 6% is the fixed point. Meat and animal derivatives takes in whatever else the batch brings, cereals can be any grain at all, and derivatives of vegetable origin stretches across almost anything grown. The biggest names in pet food all write labels this way, and hygiene is not the issue. It does mean you are reading a description of a recipe rather than the recipe.

Vegetables get a printed share of 1.7%, with eggs, seeds and minerals closing things off. The analysis is deliberately modest, protein at 5.2% and fat at 3.5% as fed with crude fibre at 0.6%. That is a gentle balance for a dog whose appetite and digestion have both slowed a little. Moisture is not declared, so the usual dry matter conversions are not available for this one.

Various sugars earn a mention because they are rare on a wet list and because no quantity is given. Sugar in a stew of this kind is generally there for colour and palatability, and that does matter when an older dog needs tempting. It is a fair trade to weigh up.

Energy sits at 85 kcal per 100g against the 97 typical of adult wet food, so this is a light tray and not a rich one. Portions run generously as a result. The added mineral panel is the one place the label puts figures on the page, with iron at 16.7mg and zinc at 43.0mg per kilo alongside dosed iodine, copper and manganese.

£5.38 a kilo, in a 363 g tray.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing roughly 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75, that works out at about 985 grams and around £5.30 a day. Wet trays are mostly water by weight, so a daily amount always looks large next to a dry measure. Many owners serve this alongside a dry meal.