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

Our scoring reads this one as Average, a step under the Good band where the median adult dry food sits, and the reason is in the first two lines of the ingredients list. Wheat and maize come before the meat, protein settles at 20.0% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate at 59.3%, so the plant side is carrying most of the bowl. Protein and processing reads Poor and so does nutritional balance, one cause showing up twice rather than two separate faults, while transparency comes back Good.

None of that makes it the wrong bowl for the dog it was written for. Digestive comfort was the brief, the fat level is moderate at 12.7% of dry matter, and a medium dog who settles well on it can stay on it happily.

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.

The chicken and turkey come as a single combined meal that sits third behind wheat and maize. Total poultry is 10%, with chicken declared at 6% of that. Meal is the dried form, so that 10% is real weight in the finished kibble and not water waiting to leave in the oven. For a dry food it is still a modest share. Protein converts to 20.0% of dry matter, at the gentler end for a kibble, and the maize protein meal further down is topping that figure up alongside the birds.

Wheat leading the list is the entry most likely to give a careful reader pause. Of all the cereals it is the likeliest to sit behind a grain intolerance in dogs. If yours has never had trouble with it, it is doing an ordinary job here of forming the kibble. Behind it the cereal load is spread rather than repeated, with maize, broken rice, brown rice at 4%, barley at 3.2% and oats at 3.2%, and oats in particular bring useful soluble fibre with them.

The ActivBiome+ blend the bag leads with is declared at 4%, and it pays to read what sits inside it. Dried citrus pulp, ground pecan shell, dried cranberries, dried beet pulp and flaxseed are the same five entries already itemised on the ingredients list. They are gathered under one name, not added on top of it. As a fibre package it is a sensible one. Beet pulp is the standard steadying fibre in dry food, and pecan shell and citrus pulp add the insoluble kind that keeps things moving. Flaxseed brings plant omega 3, and cranberries carry antioxidants along with a long association with urinary health.

Two entries give away nothing about which animal they came from, the animal fat and the digest. Digest is the palatant, and it is doing real work in a recipe this lean on meat. Neither entry can help an owner who is trying to keep a specific protein out of the bowl. Everything else on the list is named plainly, which makes the vagueness of these two stand out more than it would elsewhere.

The mineral panel is fully declared, with zinc at 147 mg and iron at 83.7 mg in each kilogram of food, and copper, manganese, iodine and selenium all given figures beside them. Calcium works out at 0.85% of dry matter, a settled adult level. Crude fibre lands at 2.8% of dry matter, which tells you the fibre here is chosen for quality and not piled in for bulk.

£4.64 a kilo, sold in 2.5 kg and 14 kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 238 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £1.11 a day. Portion by the waistline, and let a settled stomach tell you when you have it right.