Hill's Science Plan Perfect Digestion Adult Small & Mini Dry Dog Food Chicken & Brown Rice review

This label lands in our Average band, against a Good for the typical adult dry food. No single thing decides it; the reasons stack up. Cereal takes the opening two places, named poultry stops at 9%, maize gluten meal contributes plant protein, and estimated carbohydrate reaches 58.8% of dry matter where a typical dry food runs at 46.2%. Protein and processing lands Poor, nutritional balance the same, while transparency reads Good. Our scoring measures general nutrition, though, and this recipe aims at a narrower target than that. If your small dog's digestion settles on it, that result matters far more to you than any band ever will.

Ingredients, as declared: Wheat, maize, chicken (5%) and turkey meal (total poultry 9%), animal fat, maize gluten meal, digest, brewers' rice, brown rice (4%), barley (3.2%), oats (3.2%), ground pecan shell, minerals, dried beet pulp, flaxseed, dried citrus pulp, dried cranberries.

Wheat and maize open the recipe and the rices arrive further down, brewers' rice first and brown rice declared at 4%. Brewers' rice is the small fragments left by milling and it is a quick, easily digested starch, while brown rice keeps its bran layer and the fibre that comes with it. Barley and oats at 3.2% each round the cereal side out.

The digestion case rests on the final stretch of the list. Ground pecan shell is an insoluble fibre that adds bulk and passes straight through. Dried beet pulp is the gentle fermenter, food for the bacteria a dog already has. Soluble fibre and plant compounds come from dried cranberries, dried citrus pulp and flaxseed. Mixing fibre types like that is a sound approach to an unsettled gut, and this recipe exists to do exactly that.

Meat is the thinnest part of the label. Chicken is declared at 5% inside a combined chicken and turkey meal totalling 9% poultry. Because the meal goes in dry, gram for gram it beats fresh meat declared at the same figure. Even so, 9% is a small share, and protein finishes at 20.2% of dry matter.

Maize gluten meal deserves a mention because it is doing real work here. It is a concentrated protein fraction of maize, used to raise the protein figure without meat. Dogs digest it perfectly well, though it is a plant protein with a narrower amino acid profile than an animal one. On a food written for sensitive digestions, it is the entry a careful owner will weigh up hardest.

Animal fat is the main energy source and names no animal, and digest, the palatant that makes dry food taste of something, is unnamed too. The trace minerals are dosed per kilo, with zinc at 134 mg, iron at 76.4 mg, manganese at 7.9 mg, copper at 7.5 mg, iodine at 1.9 mg and selenium at 0.2 mg. Calcium sits at 0.77% of dry matter and moisture is declared at 9.0%, a shade damper than most kibble.

£4.83 a kilo, sold in 1.5kg and 6kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 237 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £1.15 a day. Nearly every dog on it eats far less, since this is a small breed recipe. The label asks 105 grams for a 5kg dog and 180 grams for a 10kg one.