Hill's Science Plan Perfect Digestion Large Breed Adult 1+ Dog Food with Chicken and Brown Rice review

There is a clear distance between this label and the typical adult dry food, which our scoring reads as Good while this one reads Average. Composition explains it. Cereal leads, named poultry totals 10%, maize protein meal adds plant protein behind it, and estimated carbohydrate settles at 59.3% of dry matter. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Poor, though transparency reads Good. Worth holding alongside that is what the recipe is actually for. A fibre blend declared at 4% with all five parts named in print is more than most digestive kibbles commit to. A big dog whose stools firm up on it has had the only result that really counts.

Ingredients, as declared: Wheat, maize, chicken and turkey meal (chicken 6%; total poultry 10%), animal fat, digest, broken rice, maize protein meal, brown rice (4%), barley (3.2%), oats (3.2%), ground pecan shell, minerals, dried beet pulp, flaxseed, dried citrus pulp, dried cranberries. ActivBiome+ Digestion prebiotic blend (4%): Ground pecan shell, dried beet pulp, flaxseed, dried citrus pulp, dried cranberries.

Wheat and maize open the list and set the carbohydrate load, with broken rice, brown rice at 4% and barley and oats at 3.2% each filling in behind them. That is a wide spread of starches for one recipe, and a varied one, though it adds up to a great deal of grain by weight.

The bag is named for that blend, declared at 4% and broken out in full: flaxseed, dried cranberries, dried beet pulp, dried citrus pulp and ground pecan shell. Pecan shell is a coarse insoluble fibre that adds bulk, beet pulp ferments gently and feeds the gut's resident bacteria, and the citrus pulp and cranberries carry soluble fibre and plant antioxidants. Printing both the percentage and the components lets an owner judge the claim instead of taking it on trust.

The animal protein sits in one entry, a chicken and turkey meal at 6% chicken and 10% total poultry. Meal is rendered and dried before mixing, so that 10% carries more protein than fresh meat declared at the same size would. The panel reads 18.4% protein, or 20.0% of dry matter. Maize protein meal sits behind it as a plant protein concentrate, doing part of the same job without being meat.

The main energy source is animal fat, with no animal given. Digest, the palatant sprayed on to make kibble taste of something, is equally unspecific. Neither is unusual in a kibble made at this scale, though together they leave a gap where a full account of the animal content would sit.

Crude fibre finishes at 2.8% of dry matter, which is modest, so as with any fibre led recipe the effect comes from the mix rather than the mass. The trace minerals are dosed per kilo: zinc at 147 mg, iron at 83.7 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 0.85% of dry matter, a settled level for an adult dog of any size.

£5.00 a kilo, sold in a 14kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 238 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £1.19 a day. A large breed dog will get through considerably more than that, so use the label's feeding table as the starting point and let condition settle the rest.