Hill's Science Plan Perfect Digestion Large Breed Puppy Food with Chicken & Brown Rice review

This bag settles into our Good band, level with the middle of the puppy dry field, so the headline result is an ordinary one. The shape underneath is less ordinary. Protein and processing reads Good and so does transparency, on quantified poultry and an itemised prebiotic blend, while nutritional balance reads Average on a moderate protein declaration and a full carbohydrate load.

What a band cannot show is how deliberately the calcium has been pitched for a large breed puppy. That is the single hardest part of this brief to get right, and it is why this bag deserves a look from anyone rearing a big dog.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken and turkey meal (chicken 16%; total poultry 25%), maize, broken rice, animal fat, digest, brown rice (4%), barley, oats, cellulose, minerals, ground pecan shell, flaxseed, dried beet pulp, dried citrus pulp, fish oil, vegetable oil, dried cranberries. ActivBiome+ prebiotic blend (4%): Ground pecan shell, flaxseed, dried beet pulp, dried citrus pulp, dried cranberries.

Chicken and turkey meal leads, and Hill's does the useful thing of declaring both the chicken at 16% and the total poultry at 25%. Meal goes into the mixer dry, so what the pack prints is close to what the kibble holds. Protein is declared at 25.2%, or 27.4% of dry matter, which is moderate for a growth food and deliberately so for a dog that should not be encouraged to grow too quickly.

Maize sits second with broken rice third, and barley, oats and a declared 4% brown rice follow further down. Carbohydrate is estimated at 42.3% as fed, or 46.0% of dry matter against the 39.0% typical. That makes it a cereal heavy kibble by design, with the fat and protein pitched to match.

The 4% ActivBiome+ blend has five parts and the pack prints them all: ground pecan shell, dried citrus pulp, dried beet pulp, dried cranberries and flaxseed. Crude fibre is declared at 3.6%. Fermentable and bulking fibres both sit in that blend, and it is what stands behind the digestion claim printed on the front.

Cellulose turns up midway down the list. It is a purified plant fibre, useful for bulk but nothing like the fibre in whole fruit and vegetables. The animal fat is unnamed as to species, and so is the digest. Digest is the cooked palatant that makes a lean, cereal led kibble worth finishing.

Calcium converting to 1.0% of dry matter is the line that earns this bag its name. Too much calcium is the classic way to cause trouble in a large, fast growing skeleton. On a food written for exactly that job, a restrained figure is the right answer and not a shortfall. Ash at 6.0% is modest for the same reason.

Fish oil and vegetable oil close the fats, the first a genuine marine omega 3 source and the second unnamed as to plant. The trace element panel is dosed in print. Zinc is at 140 mg, iron at 80.1 mg, copper at 7.9 mg, manganese at 8.3 mg, iodine at 2.0 mg and selenium at 0.2 mg per kilo, and dried cranberries finish the recipe.

£4.28 a kilo, sold in a 12kg bag.

A large breed puppy has no steady daily figure. Intake peaks well before the first birthday and then falls away. Let the bag's own chart set the amount, and run your hands over your dog's ribs and waist every fortnight to check you have it right.