Hill's Science Plan Puppy <1 review

Our Average band is where this tin lands, and the distance from the Excellent band a typical puppy wet food occupies is mostly a distance in disclosure. Protein and processing, nutritional balance and transparency all read Good. The analysis is complete and the calcium is printed, the chicken percentage is real and the mineral doses are given per kilo, so nothing here is being hidden from the buyer. It is the four umbrella terms doing the rest of the naming that keep the reading low.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and animal derivatives (chicken 21%), cereals, derivatives of vegetable origin, minerals, oils and fats.

Only five entries appear on this list, and the first of them carries most of the tin. Meat and animal derivatives, with chicken declared at 21%, is the opening line, and the law behind that phrase covers the flesh of any warm-blooded land animal, from prime cuts to the least appealing offcuts. Hill's formulates to a fixed specification and does not rework recipes casually, so what goes in is likely to be consistent from batch to batch. The point is simply that the wording gives a buyer no way to verify it.

Second on the list is cereals, every bit as broad a term, standing in for whichever grain the recipe happens to use. Derivatives of vegetable origin follows, covering processed plant material of almost any kind. Neither term tells you whether anything changed between one tin and the next.

The starch that comes with those entries shows up plainly in the analysis. Carbohydrate converts to an estimated 37.9% of dry matter, well clear of the 13.6% a typical puppy tin runs at, so more of the work here is being done by cereal than by meat. Protein still converts to 28.8% of dry matter and fat to 20.8%, a respectable shape with the water discounted.

Calcium converts to 1.33% of dry matter, declared and sitting inside the range a growing skeleton is reared on. On a growth food this is the number that earns the most trust, and it is printed here without any fuss made about it.

The added mineral panel is dosed per kilo: iron at 9.6 mg/kg, zinc at 24.6 mg/kg, manganese at 2.1 mg/kg, copper at 1.6 mg/kg and iodine at 0.3 mg/kg. Energy is 99 kcal per 100g against a 106 typical. Crude fibre converts to 5.0% of dry matter, higher than most tins manage and welcome in a pup whose stools want a little more form to them.

Sold in 370g tins.

The label's own guide runs from 92.5g a day for a 1kg puppy up to 740g a day at the top of its chart.

That climb is steep in the early months and then levels off. Read the chart against your puppy's age and the size they are heading for, and keep updating the figure as they grow.