Hill's Science Plan Puppy <1 Medium: With Chicken review

The chicken recipe lands in our Good band, level with the typical puppy kibble, while the lamb sits a step below in our Average band. There protein and processing reads Average, even as transparency reads Excellent and nutritional balance Good. The chicken is the more even of the two. Protein and processing reads Good, and so do nutritional balance and transparency. That evenness matters: this is not one soft area dragging a strong one down. What holds the range back is composition rather than candour. The analysis is printed in full and the calcium is there in black and white. The ingredients list leans on rice and maize, with unnamed animal fat alongside them. Higher placed growth foods lead with named, itemised meat.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken and turkey meal (chicken 19%; total poultry 29%), broken rice, brown rice, animal fat, maize, digest, barley, oats, dried beet pulp, minerals, maize protein meal, flaxseed, vegetable oil, fish oil (0.5%), oat bran, fructo-oligosaccharides. ActivBiome+ Multi Benefit prebiotic blend (0.6%): Oat bran, fructo-oligosaccharides.

The two recipes take different routes to the same job. The chicken version opens with chicken and turkey meal, 19% chicken inside a 29% total poultry figure. A dried meal has lost its water before mixing, so the printed share carries through to the finished kibble fairly directly. The lamb version reverses the order, putting broken rice first at 26% with lamb meal behind it at 16%.

Rice does most of the binding across the range. Maize and maize protein meal join it. Carbohydrate converts to 40.5% of dry matter in the chicken version, 38.6% in the lamb, either side of the 39.0% a typical puppy dry food runs at. The starch load here is ordinary for a kibble.

Digest is the entry doing the palatability work. It is a processed protein coating sprayed onto the kibble so that it tastes of something, and it earns its place on a fussy pup's bag. Like the animal fat further up, it is tied to no named animal.

On a growth food nothing matters more than calcium, and Hill's prints it. It converts to 1.55% of dry matter in the chicken version, 1.48% in the lamb, both sitting comfortably inside the band a growing skeleton is reared on. Getting this number wrong is the classic error in puppy feeding, so a declared, in-range figure on every recipe is worth real credit.

The lamb recipe leans harder on plant protein than the chicken one does, with soybean meal and pea protein both high on its list. Vegetable proteins do not match meat for digestibility or for amino acid profile, so read them as shoring up the analysis and not driving it.

Each list closes on the ActivBiome+ Multi Benefit prebiotic blend at 0.6%, which the label itself breaks down as oat bran and fructo-oligosaccharides. Both of those also appear as standalone entries, so the blend is a naming convention rather than a separate addition. Flaxseed and fish oil handle the omega fats, and the mineral panel is dosed per kilo, with zinc at 141 mg/kg in the chicken recipe and 152 mg/kg in the lamb.

Chicken and turkey meal opens this recipe, with chicken declared at 19% inside a 29% total poultry figure, and broken rice and brown rice follow it. Barley and oats appear on this recipe alone, and they widen the cereal base a little. The analysis reads 27.4% protein and 17.9% fat, or 29.8% and 19.5% converted onto a dry matter basis, with energy at 375 kcal per 100g against a 376 typical. Fish oil is the lighter of the range's two inclusions at 0.5%, calcium converts to 1.55% of dry matter, and zinc is dosed at 141 mg/kg.

The chicken recipe is sold in 800g, 2.5kg, 6kg, 14kg and 18kg bags, and the lamb and rice in 2.5kg, 14kg and 18kg.

A puppy's daily amount moves about. It climbs through the early months and eases back as growth slows. Start from what the bag's chart says, and let your pup's shape have the final word.