Hill's Science Plan Perfect Weight & Active Mobility Large Breed Adult Dog Food with Chicken review

Our scoring lands this level with the median adult dry food, both in the Good band, and the two halves of the reading pull against each other. The nutrition side does well for a diet food: estimated carbohydrate converts to 37.3% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. Protein still reaches 28.2% of dry matter, and energy at 321 kcal per 100g sits under the usual 357. That is exactly the shape a weight recipe should have.

What holds it level is the ingredient side, where wheat, maize and a purified fibre take up a lot of room and a couple of entries name no species. All four pillars read Good, and the honest summary is a food engineered for a purpose rather than assembled from the finest list you will ever read.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken and turkey meal (chicken 9%; total poultry 15%), wheat, pea bran meal, maize, maize protein meal, digest, dried tomato pomace, cellulose, dried beet pulp, flaxseed, coconut oil, vegetable oil, fish oil (1.9%), minerals, animal fat, dried carrots, pork cartilage (source of chondroitin sulphate), crustacean shell hydrolysate (source of glucosamine).

The chicken and turkey meal that opens the list is the dried form, so its 15% is weight that survives into the finished kibble. The split is printed as well, chicken at 9% with the balance of the poultry made up by turkey. Protein finishes at 28.2% of dry matter, respectable for a food that has had calories deliberately taken out of it, though the maize protein meal further down is helping that number along.

Fibre is the engine of this recipe. Crude fibre at 13.3% as fed is several times the level of a standard adult kibble. Pea bran meal, dried tomato pomace, cellulose and dried beet pulp work together to reach it. You would not recognise cellulose on a plate. It is purified plant fibre, and it is here to take up room in the stomach while contributing next to nothing in calories. That is the whole trick of a slimming diet: the dog gets a full bowl and takes in less.

Named sources back the mobility half of the name. Many labels do not manage that. Pork cartilage is declared as the chondroitin source and crustacean shell hydrolysate as the glucosamine one, with fish oil at 1.9% bringing the marine omega 3s that joint support leans on. Neither joint ingredient carries a printed milligram dose, so read them as support built into daily feeding, not as a measured supplement your vet would count.

Wheat sitting second and maize a little below it makes this a cereal-carrying recipe despite the meat opening it. The fats are a mix of the specific and the vague: coconut oil, flaxseed and fish oil are all named, while vegetable oil, animal fat and digest are not. For most large dogs that is academic, and digest in particular is doing an honest job of keeping a reduced-calorie kibble appetising. It counts only for an owner keeping one particular meat out of the bowl.

Every trace mineral carries a dose in print, zinc at 126 mg and iron at 72 mg in each kilogram of food, with copper, manganese, iodine and selenium listed alongside them. Calcium comes out at 0.91% of dry matter, comfortable for an adult of any size, and dried carrots and tomato pomace bring the antioxidants that round the list off.

£5.00 a kilo, sold in a single 12 kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats roughly 262 grams a day on an assumed 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at about £1.31 a day. A large breed dog obviously eats more than that, and the label puts an 80kg dog at 640 grams a day, so scale between the two. A dog on a slimming plan is fed to the weight you want rather than the one on the scales today, which makes your vet's target the number that decides the scoop.