Hill's Science Plan Medium Mature Adult Dog Food with Lamb and Rice review

Our scoring reads this label as Average against a Good for the typical adult dry food. Three things account for most of the difference. Named meat is limited to 8% lamb meal, two of the protein contributors are plants in soybean meal and maize protein meal, and estimated carbohydrate settles at 59.0% of dry matter. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Poor, with transparency Good. No number shows why many owners buy this bag. A medium senior who has fallen out with poultry gets a familiar, consistent kibble with a different animal at the front, and that swap alone can restart a bowl that had stopped being emptied.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize, wheat, broken rice (12%), lamb meal (8%), soybean meal, animal fat, flaxseed, digest, vegetable oil, maize protein meal, dried beet pulp, 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.

Maize and wheat take the opening places and broken rice at 12% follows, so three cereals sit ahead of everything else in this recipe. Of the three, rice sits easiest with most dogs' digestion. Broken rice is the fragmented grain that milling leaves behind, and it behaves in the bowl exactly as whole rice does.

Lamb meal at 8% is the named meat and the reason to choose this recipe over its stablemates. Meal means the lamb has been rendered and dried before it goes in, so it carries considerably more protein per gram than fresh lamb would at the same declared percentage. For a dog who has eaten poultry all its life, lamb is a genuinely useful change of animal. It digests easily and dogs like the taste.

The entry to think about here is soybean meal. It is a concentrated plant protein used to raise the protein figure, digestible enough for most dogs, and also one of the more common triggers in dogs that react to what they eat. Maize protein meal a little further down works on the same principle. Between them they mean the 17.2% protein on the panel is not arriving entirely from animals.

No species is attached to animal fat or digest, and the pork cartilage names one that is not lamb. That is the honest limit on the lamb story here. The recipe is lamb led, not lamb only. A dog being tested for a poultry reaction would need a label that names every animal source in it.

Flaxseed sits high for a supplement and supplies plant omega 3, with dried beet pulp carrying the fermentable fibre. Crude fibre still comes out at only 2.4% of dry matter. ActivBiome+ makes up 0.6%, a prebiotic pairing of oat bran and fructo-oligosaccharides for the gut's own bacteria. The trace minerals are dosed per kilo: zinc at 158 mg, iron at 90.3 mg, manganese at 9.3 mg, copper at 8.9 mg, iodine at 2.2 mg and selenium at 0.2 mg. Calcium sits at 0.79% of dry matter.

£4.50 a kilo, sold in a 14kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat around 231 grams a day, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £1.04 a day. Hill's own table asks 205 grams for the same dog. Start there, and the waistline settles the difference.