Hill's Science Plan Perfect Weight Adult Dog Food with Chicken & Vegetables review

Average is the band, and the arithmetic behind it is mostly about declaration. Protein and processing reads Good, while transparency reads Average. The animal content is one figure inside a category term, the plant side is described and never named, and the analysis leaves out moisture and ash. A large part of the recipe cannot be assessed from the outside. The Excellent band is where adult wet food lands as a group, helped along by labels that name their meat and print their moisture. What a score of that kind cannot capture is that the tray does what a weight recipe should, with fibre lifted and energy held down. A dog losing weight steadily on it is being served properly.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and animal derivatives (chicken 4%), derivatives of vegetable origin, vegetables (7%), vegetable protein extracts, eggs and egg derivatives, seeds, oils and fats, minerals, fruit.

The animal share is the smallest on this shelf. Chicken is pinned at 4% and everything else sits under meat and animal derivatives, a legal term that spans the entire quality range and gives no clue which animal or which cut arrived. That is a house style rather than a red flag, and it is the same one this maker uses right across its wet range.

The plant side is where a weight recipe earns its keep. Vegetables are declared at 7%, with derivatives of vegetable origin, seeds and fruit filling in behind them. No cereal is named at all, though that broad vegetable derivatives term is wide enough to include grain products, so it is not quite the same thing as a grain-free promise.

Vegetable protein extracts also make the list. They help lift protein to 7.4% as fed, the strongest as fed protein figure on this shelf, using plant protein that is not identified by source. Plant protein is less complete for a dog than meat protein, which is worth holding in mind whenever a headline protein number looks strong on a light food.

Crude fibre at 3.4% as fed is the number that matters most here. Fibre slows a meal down and keeps a hungry dog comfortable, and set alongside fat at 3.3% and energy at 90 kcal per 100g it adds up to a coherent piece of calorie control. The mineral panel is dosed throughout, iron at 12.4mg and zinc at 33.2mg per kilo with copper, manganese and iodine each carrying a figure.

£6.08 a kilo, in a 363 g tray.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75), which this recipe covers with roughly 929 grams, or about £5.65 a day. A dog on a reducing plan eats under a maintenance figure, so the amount your vet sets is the one to follow.